The  Renaissance 
of  Motherhocr 

Ellen  Key 


By  Ellen  Key 

The  Century  of  the  Child 

The  Education  of  the  Child 

Love  and  Marriage 

The  Woman  Movement 

Rahel  Varnhagen 

The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 


The  Renaissance  of 
Motherhood 


By 

Ellen  Key 


Author  of  "Love  and  Marriage,"  "The  Century  of  the  Child/'  etc. 


Translated  from  the  Swedish  by 

Anna  E.  B.  Fries 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

ttbe  imfcfeerbocfcer  press 
1914 


COPYRIGHT,  1914 

BY 
ELLEN   KEY 


Ube  ftnfcfcerbocfcer  fcress,  flew  H?ork 


80 

HAVELOCK  ELLIS 

IN    PROFOUND   ADMIRATION 
AND   GRATITUDE 


PREFACE 

TN  this  book  I  have  spoken  of  the  social 
*  means  possible  for  calling  forth  a  renais- 
sance of  motherhood.  I  have  proposed  the 
study  of  eugenics;  a  year  of  social  service  as 
preparation  for  motherhood ;  state  pensions  for 
mothers — which  does  not  imply  that  the 
fathers  are  to  be  freed  from  the  responsibility. 
But  the  real  renaissance  must  come  through 
the  education  of  the  feelings.  Many  women 
now  advance  as  the  ideal  of  the  future,  the  self- 
supporting  wife  working  out  of  the  home  and 
leaving  the  care  and  education  of  the  children 
to  "  born  "  educators.  This  ideal  is  the  death 
of  home-life  and  family  life.  No  renaissance 
of  motherhood  is  possible  before  mothers  and 
teachers,  through  their  own  attitude  towards 
the  values  involved,  as  through  the  fiction 
they  give  the  girls  to  read,  through  their  own 
counsels  and  their  scientific  sexual  enlighten- 
ment, prepare  the  girls*  hearts  for  love  and 


vi  Preface 

motherhood.  Then  young  women  will  again 
be  alive  to  the  truth,  spoken  by  the  greatest 
woman  poet  the  world  ever  saw: 

"  Passioned  to  exalt 
The  artist's  instinct  in  me  at  the  cost 
Of  putting  down  the  woman's,  I  forgot 
No  perfect  artist  is  developed  here 
From  any  imperfect  woman.     Flower  from  root, 
And  spiritual  from  natural,  grade  by  grade 
In  all  our  life." 

Aurora  Leigh. 

And  then  will  come  indeed,  the  new  religion 
of  the  new  century,  the  century  of  the  child, 
now  only  a  hope  in  the  soul  of  some  dreamers. 

ELLEN  KEY. 

STRAND,  ALVASTRA, 
February  28,  1914. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. — WOMEN  AND  MORALS  i 

II. — MOTHERLINESS       .....         95 

III. — EDUCATION  FOR  MOTHERHOOD       .        .     123 


vii 


Women   and    Morals 


IT  is  for  women  to  discover  what  might  be  called 
experimental  morality  and  for  us  to  reduce  it  to  a 
system.  Woman  has  greater  intuition  and  man  greater 
genius;  woman  observes  and  man  reasons;  and  from 
this  collaboration  we  get  the  clearest  light  and  the 
most  complete  science  of  which  the  human  mind  is 
capable;  in  other  words,  the  surest  knowledge  of 
one's  self  and  of  others  which  it  is  possible  for  human- 
ity to  have.1 

With  these  words  Rousseau  expresses  an 
ever  living  truth,  a  truth  which  all  great 
women  have  confirmed.  They  have  done  so 
through  their  works  as  well  as  through  their 
expressions  of  opinions  about  their  own  sex. 
Women's  strength  in  all  departments — and 

1  "C'est  aux  femmes  &  trouver  pour  ainsi  dire  la  moral  expe"ri- 
mental,  &  nous  a  la  reduire  en  systeme.  La  femme  a  plus  d  'esprit 
et  1  'homme  plus  de  ge"nie;  la  femme  observe  et  1  'homme  raisonne ; 
de  ce  concours  result  la  lumiere  la  plus  claire  et  la  science  la  plus 
complete  que  puisse  acquerir  de  Iui-m6me  1'esprit  humain;  la 
plus  sure  connaissance  en  un  mot  de  soi  et  des  autres  qui  soit 
a  la  ported  de  notre  espece."— JEAN  JACQUES  ROUSSEAU. 

3 


4      The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

that  of  morals  is  no  exception  —  has  not  been 
of  the  quality  belonging  to  directly  creative 
genius.  Their  contribution  to  the  devel- 
opment of  morals  has  grown  out  of  their 
intuition  in  regard  to  the  ideal;  their  swift 
valuations  in  the  province  of  experience; 
their  sure  eye  for  the  shades  rather  than  the 
main  lines  in  ethics  —  quick  sympathy  in  indi- 
vidual cases  rather  than  discernment  of  fun- 
damental principles. 

In  the  essay  which  follows,  the  word 
11  morals  "  is  used  to  signify  the  funds  of 
experience  which  humanity  has  gained,  through 
pain  and  joy,  and  of  the  actions  which  possess 
a  life-preserving  and  life-enhancing  value, 
for  individuals  as  for  society.  That  which 
benefits  body  and  soul  has  become  good;  the 
opposite,  evil.  The  development  of  morals 
consists  in  an  ever  clearer  understanding  of 
the  most  active  means  towards  the  realisation 
of  the  aim  just  mentioned  —  pursuing  and  en- 
nobling the  ideal  for  quickening  the  intensity 
of  life. 

During  this  process  of  development  (if  we 
except  the  modern  Theosophic  and  Christian 
Science  movements),  women  have  not  served 
morals  as  founders  of  religions;  neither  have 


;  • 


Women  and  Morals  5 

they  formed  systems  of  the  philosophy  of 
ethics.  And  had  they  been  given  oppor- 
tunity as  lawmakers,  they  probably  would 
not  have  created  the  great  works  of  law.  On 
the  other  hand,  when  it  comes  to  the  applica- 
tion to  life  of  existing  laws  and  morals,  woman, 
because  of  her  willing  receptiveness,  her 
elasticity  and  adaptability  combined  with  her 
power  of  tenacious  retention,  has  exerted 
an  influence,  the  value  of  which  is  too  vast  to 
be  measured.  Neither  can  its  history  be 
written,  for  it  would  take  the  form  of  countless 
histories  from  the  animals*  lair  and  the  cave- 
dwellers*  hearth  to  our  day,  when  the  mother, 
happy  over  some  noble  deed,  strokes  the  hair 
from  her  son's  brow,  to  print  the  kiss  of  her 
approval  there ;  or  when  with  gentle  words  of 
wisdom  she  draws  for  him  the  picture  of  those 
high  possibilities  he  may  be  wasting.  Or  it 
would  picture  the  wife  who,  when  her  husband 
is  called  upon  to  choose  between  selfish  ad- 
vantage or  a  higher  aim,  urges  him  to  sacrifice 
the  advantage  to  follow  his  conscience.  Or 
when,  from  the  beginning  of  history  up  to  our 
day,  women,  struggling  single-handed,  like 
Antigone  of  old,  have  illumined  as  by  a 
lightning  flash  the  prejudices  and  baseness  that 


6      The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

enslaved  their  age.  Or  again  when,  here  and 
there,  groups  of  women  have  stood  side  by 
side  with  men  in  willing  martyrdom  for  re- 
ligion and  country,  justice  and  freedom.  Or 
— as  in  these  latter  days — when  women,  at 
first  one  by  one,  afterwards  in  battalions, 
fight  for  their  right  to  equality  with  men, 
combining  their  determination  to  have  their 
rights  with  the  moral  duty  actively  to  fight 
against  all  the  sin  and  suffering  in  which 
society  as  yet  is  buried. 

Against  these  positive  contributions  by 
women  toward  the  growth  of  morals,  stand 
their  negative  influences:  directly  through 
their  own  actions  and  indirectly  through  their 
encouragement  and  acceptance  of  men's  non- 
morality  in  private  and  public  life.  Thus 
women  have  sometimes  retarded  the  ethical 
evolution,  sometimes  led  it  astray.  To  give 
one  example  among  many:  I  may  remind  the 
reader  of  the  testimonies  the  Icelandic  legends 
bear  to  this  influence  from  the  day  when  the 
men  began  to  allow  manslaughter  in  a  family 
feud  to  be  redeemed  with  fines,  while  the 
women,  with  tears  or  scorn,  pricked  them  on 
to  carry  out  the  commands  of  blood  revenge. 
Or  of  how,  in  our  day,  during  the  Boer  War 


Women  and  Morals  7 

the  majority  of  English  women  approved  of 
their  own  country.  Every  impartial  retro- 
spective survey  of  the  development  of  morals 
will  show  us  that  just  as  there  have  been  times 
when  men  and  women  have  risen  together, 
there  have  been  times  when  they  have  sunk 
together.  It  will  show  us  that  there  have 
been  women  who  have  exercised  not  merely 
all  the  virtues  which  we  justly  call  womanly, 
but  also  those  which  rightly  are  called  manly. 
Likewise  it  will  show  that  women  have 
practised  all  the  vices  called  masculine,  with- 
out desisting  from  those  considered  especially 
feminine. 

Every  generalisation  in  regard  to  women 
and  morals  of  a  certain  age  or  country  be- 
comes misleading,  unless  the  many  exceptions 
are  constantly  kept  in  mind.  One  such 
misleading  generalisation  is,  for  example, 
that  men  have  created  the  code  of  laws,  women 
the  code  of  conventions, — that  is,  the  unwritten 
laws  which  often  bind  more  than  the  written 
ones.  We  need  only  remember  in  this  con- 
nection man's  conception  of  "debts  of  honour  " 
— for  instance,  gambling  debts — as  compared 
with  his  ignoring  of  the  debt  to  the  woman 
he  has  betrayed;  or  think  how  sensitive  his 


8      The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

honour  when  prompting  to  duels,  how  lack- 
ing in  regard  to  the  illegitimate  children  he 
has  brought  into  life.  Such  conceptions  as 
knightly  honour  or  warrior  pride,  business 
integrity  or  artistic  conscience,  indicate  a  few 
of  those  unwritten  laws  which  proffer  sufficient 
evidence  that  man  in  his  sphere,  to  a  greater 
extent  perhaps  than  woman  in  hers,  has  been 
a  maker  of  conventions,  objectionable  and 
otherwise.  It  is  in  the  province  of  home  and 
society  that  woman  has  fashioned  the  customs. 
Here  women 's  approval  and  disapproval, 
wishes  and  wants,  have  been  quite  as  formative 
and  reformative  as  the  action  of  the  sea  on 
the  mainland.  Both  in  regard  to  what  we 
ought  to  do  and  what  we  should  refrain  from 
doing,  from  table  manners  to  the  behaviour 
that  expresses  the  presence  or  absence  of 
love,  from  superficial  refinement  to  large- 
hearted  deference,  it  is  woman  who,  in  home 
and  society,  has  been  the  leader.  And  to  the 
extent,  therefore,  that  out  ward  behaviour  reacts 
upon  inner  life,  woman  has  shaped  and  re- 
shaped our  conceptions  of  right  or  wrong. 
Through  quick  and  strong  expressions  of 
sympathy  or  antipathy  for  certain  thoughts  or 
actions,  through  a  light  but  incessant  pressure, 


Women  and  Morals  9 

she  has  gradually  dissolved  or  rearranged  the 
strata  of  our  ethical  ideas;  her  persistent  dis- 
approval has,  drop  by  drop,  made  a  groove 
in  some  strong  principle;  the  unceasing  waves 
of  her  feelings  have  rounded  our  sharp-edged 
moral  commandments. 

In  many  cases,  then,  woman  has  modified 
the  moral  code,  and  again  has  conserved  it, 
by  virtue  of  her  stubborn  tenacity,  which  is 
one  with  her  best  traits — tenderness,  faith- 
fulness, and  piety.  This  conservatism,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  the  reverse  side  of  what  is 
intellectually  the  weakest  of  her  characteristics, 
her  aversion  to  the  serious  mental  labour 
involved  in  the  examination  of  new  ideas, 
her  disinclination  to  the  impartial  quest  of 
truth,  her  lack  of  thirst  for  objective  know- 
ledge. These  weaknesses,  though  less  flagrant 
with  an  advancing  culture,  have  long  made  of 
the  average  woman  a  fanatical  defender  of 
blind  prejudices  and  obsolete  moral  laws. 

Women's  ethical  conservatism,  however, 
has  been  of  the  greatest  importance.  On  the 
one  hand  it  gives  a  training  in  habits  which 
finally  become  instincts  in  regard  to  what  is 
right;  on  the  other,  by  treasuring  moral 
assets  during  periods  of  transition,  which 


io    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

otherwise  would  have  been  swept  away  by 
evolution — when  it  has  taken  on  the  swiftness 
of  spring  floods;  finally,  by  remoulding  and 
thus  saving  certain  indispensable  moral  gains 
threatened  with  obliteration  by  a  new  phi- 
losophy of  life. 

In  George  Eliot,  we  have  a  great  yet  a 
typical  example  of  women's  ethical  contribu- 
tion to  the  development  of  moral  conception. 
She,  who  was  an  affirmed  disciple  of  Comte  and 
Spencer;  who  had  translated  Feuerbach's 
book  against  Christianity;  who  lived  in  a 
conscience-marriage,  because  the  man  she 
loved  had  not  fulfilled  the  forms  required  for  a 
legal  divorce,  and  who  was  therefore  tied  to 
an  unfaithful  wife, — she  became  by  her  works 
a  golden  bridge  between  the  old  ethics  and 
the  new.  Or,  rather,  she  found  in  her  new 
philosophy  of  life  good  and  valid  reasons  for 
supporting  time-honoured  moral  laws.  Her 
works  glorify  self-sacrifice,  virtue,  faithfulness, 
duty.  She  demonstrates  Nietzsche's  satirical 
words  as  to  the  lack  of  consistency  of  the 
Englishman  who  when  discarding  Christian 
faith  holds  closer  than  ever  to  Christian 
morals. 

But  the  altruism  of  George  Eliot,  as  that  of 


Women  and  Morals  n 

other  non-Christians,  has  a  deeper  foundation. 
This  is  upon  the  fact  that  countless  people, 
before  and  after  Christianity,  are  Christians 
by  nature,  and  that  the  love  of  humanity  has 
been  practised  with  more  consistency  by 
many  so-called  heathens  than  by  most  con- 
fessors of  the  Christian  faith.  To  George 
Eliot,  life  held  neither  beauty  nor  order  unless 
lived  in  altruism,  in  mutual  helpfulness,  in 
sacrifice  of  one's  own  happiness  for  that  of 
others.  She  founded  her  ethics  on  Darwin's 
then  accepted  theory  of  heredity,  on  Spencer's 
teaching  of  the  influence  of  contemporaries 
and  environment  upon  morals,  on  Comte's 
altruistic  ethics  and  his  religious  intuition 
of  the  oneness  of  humanity.  Because  of  the 
relativity  of  morals,  she  considered  it  essential 
that  each  generation  should  live  in  accordance 
with  the  standard  ethics  of  its  own  time. 
Only  thus  could  morals,  during  each  age, 
reach  the  stability  necessary  for  building 
farther  and  higher.  She  was  deeply  conscious 
of  the  controlling  power  of  the  present  over 
the  future.  Every  little  concession  to  temp- 
tation becomes  disastrous  by  its  consequences 
not  only  to  the  individual  but  also  to  coming 
generations.  The  recognition  of  this  solidar- 


12     The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

ity  is  more  fraught  with  responsibility  than 
in  the  case  of  Christianity.  Christianity 
believes  in  the  forgiveness  and  expunction  of 
sins.  But  the  new  morality  is  assured  of  the 
continuous  and  uncontrollable  consequences 
of  evil  as  well  as  of  good  actions ;  consequences 
which  persist  in  wider  and  wider  rings  and  thus 
become  determining  factors  for  my  progeny, 
my  age,  my  race,  aye,  the  whole  of  human- 
ity. 

"Also  deeds  are  our  children,  a  fruitful  and 
immortal  progeny" — George  Eliot,  who  said 
these  words,  has  crystallised  the  new  thoughts 
into  art  in  her  foremost  books  where,  with 
true  psychological  insight,  she  tells  of  the  fall 
or  victory,  perdition  or  salvation  of  the  soul. 
She  reveals  the  norm  of  the  ethical  life  of 
countless  women  when  she  glorifies  obedience 
to  the  law  of  human  love  while  at  the  same 
time  not  in  a  single  case  does  she  testify  to 
any  value  in  the  individual's  rebellion  as  a 
means  of  procuring  a  higher  morality.  Tradi- 
tion, piety,  solidarity  call  forth  her  admiration. 
And  perhaps  she  felt  a  conscious  need  to 
emphasise  these  virtues  in  order  that  her  own 
life  should  not  be  wrongly  followed  as  an 
example.  Like  her  great  Swedish  counterpart 


Women  and  Morals  13 

Selma  Lagerlof,  she  possessed  so  true  a 
womanly  tenderness  in  her  attitude  toward 
men  and  women  that  she  discovered  a  treas- 
ure-field of  redeeming  qualities  in  a  fallen  soul; 
aye,  she  had  a  Christlike  faith  in  the  power  of 
good  to  overcome  evil. 

Thirty  or  forty  years  ago  George  Eliot  was 
an  unlimited  ethical  power.  She  helped  all  of 
us  who  had  passed  from  Christianity  to  a  new 
outlook  on  life.  She  gave  us  strength  in 
self-sacrifice  and  comfort  in  suffering  by  assur- 
ing us  that  nothing  we  had  suffered  would 
matter  a  hundred  years  hence;  that  the  only 
thing  that  does  matter  is  what  we  suffered 
for.  However  severe  was  the  education  which 
she  offered  us  to  fit  us  for  our  responsibilities 
toward  humanity,  we  all  accepted  this  train- 
ing with  burning  gratitude — not  the  least 
those  of  us  who  learned  from  her  a  sense  of 
sober  responsibility  for  that  new  ethics  which 
she  herself  did  not  embrace: — the  right  of  a 
great  love  when  it  proves  itself  a  power  to 
elevate  the  life  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race ; 
the  right  of  personal  freedom  of  choice  when 
the  choice  blazes  a  glorious  path  to  new 
heights;  the  right  of  self-assertion  in  cases 
where  it  brings  about  greater  values  for  the 


14    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

present  and  for  the  future  than  would  self-de- 
nial; the  right  of  hard-heartedness  when  my 
self-sacrifice  would  harm  those  for  whom  I  sac- 
rificed myself;  and  lastly,  the  right  of  the  future. 
If  the  past  held  all  the  rights  to  our  sacrifices 
there  would  be  no  possibility  of  developing  a 
higher  morality,  but  only  of  spreading  the 
established  morality  over  wider  areas.  Not- 
withstanding George  Eliot  and  other  noble 
teachers  of  altruism,  as,  for  instance,  Tolstoy, 
it  is,  and  must  ever  be,  an  illusion  that  altruism 
is  in  every  case  the  higher  virtue,  while  egoism 
is  always  and  in  every  case  on  a  lower  moral 
plane.  Self-preservation  and  self -develop- 
ment are  basic  conditions  for  the  practice  of 
altruism.  They  are  duties  toward  the  whole 
of  society  as  well  as  to  the  individual  because 
the  elevation  of  the  whole  depends  upon  the 
highest  enhancement  of  life  which  each  in- 
dividual attains. 

A  day's  reflection  should  suffice  to  make  us 
recognise  this  truth.  On  the  other  hand  a 
whole  lifetime  will  not  teach  us  how  in  each 
individual  case  we  are  to  draw  the  often 
hair-splitting  line  between  legitimate  and  ill- 
legitimate  self-assertion.  Self-assertion  is  ille- 
gitimate when  it  is  without  value  for  the 


Women  and  Morals  15 

whole.  Therefore,  if  either  side  must  be  over- 
emphasised it  is  important  that  women  in  their 
ethical  evolution  and  in  the  function  of  their 
ideals  have  shown  themselves  inclined  to 
assert  the  power  of  human  nature,  especially 
woman's  human  nature,  on  behalf  of  altruism 
and  sympathy.  The  noblest  women  in  life 
or  literature  have  been  those  who  have 
reached  the  peace  and  harmony  which  are 
possible  only  when  an  ethical  norm  is  realised 
in  their  lives.  And  as  this  harmony  is  more 
readily  attained  when  the  norm  has  been  long 
established  and  observed,  it  is  but  natural 
that  the  old-fashioned  women  as  yet  offer  the 
loveliest  picture,  ethically  as  well  as  aesthet- 
ically. To  these  women,  in  our  day  as  in  all 
earlier  days,  the  duty  of  self-sacrifice  has  be- 
come happiness.  They  have  had  the  sanction 
of  their  conscience  as  well  as  the  outer  sanction 
of  the  patriarchal  family  right,  and  of  the 
Christian  religion.  From  such  conflicts  be- 
tween private  and  public  duties  as  man's 
conscience  so  often  encounters,  woman  has 
generally  been  spared.  If — for  instance  in  a 
period  of  religious  transition — she  has  hacj  to 
make  a  choice,  it  has  only  meant  the  exchange 
of  one  authority  for  another.  Even  when  a 


1 6    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhodd 

woman  has  rebelled  within  herself  against  the 
patriarchal  family  right,  this  rebellion  only 
reached  her  mind,  not  her  conscience,  for 
"conscience  is  born  in  the  recognition  of  the 
difference  between  ideal  and  reality."  But 
women's  power  of  moulding  ethical  ideals  was 
checked  by  authoritative  religion  as  well  as  by 
the  conventions  which  their  very  ideals  sup- 
ported. Especially  was  it  restrained  by  the 
consciousness  of  the  joy  women  alone  pos- 
sessed: the  belief  that  motherhood,  which 
implied  the  highest  happiness,  also  enjoyed 
the  fullest  sanction  as  a  duty.  In  other  words, 
women's  foremost  ethical  task  was  not  in- 
volved in  that  progress  which  in  other  depart- 
ments of  life  called  for  new  ethical  needs,  new 
aims,  new  efforts.  The  home  was  a  closed 
sphere  touched  only  at  its  edge  by  the  world's 
evolution.  To  protect  the  young  and  tend  the 
old  within  this  sphere ;  to  cherish  and  comfort, 
guide  and  restore,  train  and  love,  to  give 
pleasure  and  to  help,  remained  indisputably 
right  during  all  the  world's  changes  in  the 
domain  of  home  government,  of  religion,  or 
of  economy.  Thus  in  women's  life  theoreti- 
cal and  practical  morals  became  identical,  or, 
in  other  words,  what  from  all  points  of  view 


Women  and  Morals  17 

was  objectively  right,  was  also  subjectively 
binding  upon  her. 

With  most  people  the  ethical  imperative, 
"  You  ought, "  is  of  little  value,  while  through- 
out centuries,  superstition  and  fear  have  at 
least  had  a  restraining  influence.  In  every 
age  there  have  been  only  a  small  number  of 
true  Christians  who  have  lived  according  to 
the  commandments  of  Christianity  because 
they  loved  God.  With  the  rest,  fear  of  the 
punishment  of  society  and  of  the  torture  of 
Hell  has  been  the  restraining  force;  hope  of 
society's  praise  and  heavenly  reward  the 
incentive  power.  Thus  a  principle  primarily 
non-moral,  yet  one  which  has  proved  ser- 
viceable, in  the  education  of  humanity  and 
in  the  upbringing  of  children,  may  by  evolu- 
tion become  moral.  Objective  morals  seldom 
brought  in  their  train  other  conflicts  than  those 
between  obedience  and  disobedience.  And, 
knowing  that  their  own  thought  and  feelings 
did  not  suffice  to  answer  the  important  ques- 
tions of  right  and  wrong,  women  enjoyed  the 
effort-saving  security  of  mind  belonging  to 
a  life  led  in  accordance  with  the  Church's 
interpretation  of  the  will  of  God  in  his  Ten 
Commandments.  If  this  morality  of  women 


1 8     The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

had  not  become  established  through  the 
practice  of  numberless  generations,  its  splendid 
manifestation  to-day  in  countless  mothers, 
who,  after  the  day's  hard  labour,  yet  have  will 
and  strength  to  promote  order,  morals,  and 
pleasure  in  their  homes,  would  be  inconceiv- 
able. 

We  have  now  briefly  sketched  the  pacific 
relations  between  woman  and  morals.  The 
strong  democratic  movement  born  in  the 
English  Civil  War  and  the  French  Revolution, 
which  took  hold  of  individuals  and  common- 
wealths, included  the  emancipation  of  women. 
This  struggle  and  the  struggles  which  have 
followed  it  have  produced  much  moral  con- 
fusion, but  confusion  is  feared  only  by  him 
who  knows  not  that  evolution  awakens  needs 
and  desires  which  in  their  turn  become  motive 
forces  toward  higher  conditions  than  those  long 
honoured  and  accepted.  Such  gains  are  never 
made  without  loss  of  some  old  good.  Lamen- 
tations over  the  new  times  are  justified  only 
when  it  can  be  proved  that  a  better  organised 
or  richer  life  did  not  evolve  from  the  confusion. 

In  a  retrospect  of  the  transition  period  we 
shall  often  rediscover,  in  the  new  gains,  values 
which  we  had  thought  lost  for  ever,  but  which 


Women  and  Morals  19 

had  only  changed  their  form.  Ever  since 
the  idea  of  the  emancipation  of  woman  came 
upon  the  world's  stage,  women  have  begun, 
consciously  and  directly,  to  share  in  the  trans- 
formation of  existing  morals  and  to  demand 
a  new  morality,  particularly  in  regard  to  the 
relations  between  the  sexes.  A  century  has 
now  seen  women  labour  with  ever-increasing 
energy  for  the  renovation  of  sex  morals.  At 
the  same  time  their  new  position  as  self- 
supporters  has  indirectly  transformed  many 
ethical  conceptions  and  social  customs. 

Therefore,  when  we  speak  of  women  and 
morals,  we  must  divide  the  subject  into  two 
parts:  the  pre-emancipation  and  the  post- 
emancipation  morals, — the  morality  which 
originated  from  the  fact  that  woman  was  the 
property  of  father,  husband,  and  family,  and 
the  morality  which  arose  and  is  yet  evolving 
because  this  condition  is  being  gradually,  if 
it  is  not  yet  entirely,  abolished. 

All  scientific  theories  of  the  origin  and  devel- 
opment of  morals,  however  they  may  other- 
wise vary,  agree  on  this  one  point:  that  the 
family  is  the  root  out  of  which — irrespective 
of  differences  in  religious  and  social  laws — 
sympathetic  feelings  have  grown  and  branched 


20    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

in  all  directions.  Through  the  child  the 
family  became  more  than  the  union  of  a 
man  and  a  woman  for  the  sake  of  self -pro- 
tection. Preservation  of  the  race  involves 
demands  which  even  in  animal  life  produce 
ethical  effects  of  an  altruistic  character.  The 
closer  the  union  for  common  purposes  the 
more  manifold  become  the  ideas  of  "right" 
in  regard  to  married  life  as  well  as  to  the 
larger  life  of  society. 

What  the  strong  found  serviceable  became 
a  duty  for  the  weak.  But  beside  this  morality 
of  expedience,  there  was  at  work  an  influence 
of  idealistic  tendency,  whose  organ  at  this 
stage  was  religion.  Men  judged  the  earthly 
and  heavenly  goals  presented  by  religion  as  the 
highest,  even  when  they  had  no  tangible  as- 
sociation with  merit  or  demerit.  However, 
the  morality  which  sprang,  not  from  religion, 
but  from  life  itself  and  its  needs,  remained 
the  most  active  of  all  influence.  The  affirma- 
tions of  the  religious  code  of  morals  became 
practical  incentives  of  essential  importance 
only  when  they  adapted  themselves  to  the  new 
forms  which  social  life  acquired  in  the  course 
of  evolution. 

The  necessities  of  family  life  naturally  re- 


Women  and  Morals  21 

suited  in  the  division  of  labour  which  made  it 
man's  duty  to  defend  and  support  the  family 
and  woman's  to  care  for  the  new  lives.  This 
division  of  labour  developed  in  man  the  so- 
called  manly  virtues,  in  woman  likewise  the 
so-called  womanly  virtues.  The  former  im- 
plied more  directly  what  we  now  call  duty 
toward  ourselves,  the  latter  more  directly 
duty  toward  others.  The  lower  the  point  at 
which  morality  stands,  the  greater  is  the  gulf 
between  these  two  spheres  of  duty. 

The  history  of  morals  is  pre-eminently  the 
history  of  humanity's  endeavour  to  combine 
these  two  spheres  of  duty  by  merging  into  a 
single  ethical  system  two  equally  indispens- 
able and  valuable  fundamental  needs,  egoism 
and  altruism.  This  fusion  has  taken  place 
both  within  individuals  and  within  each  sex. 
From  certain  points  of  view  the  weaker  sex, 
so-called,  has  travelled  an  easier  path  than  the 
stronger  sex,  to  developed  morality.  The  fear 
of  the  serious  consequences  which  the  stronger 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  weaker,  when  the 
latter  had  done  "wrong, "  that  is,  acted  to  the 
master's  disadvantage,  the  approval  which 
rewarded ' '  right, ' '  that  is,  action  to  the  master's 
advantage,  has  very  likely  developed  women's 


22    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

"sense  of  duty  "  more  swiftly,  and  made  them 
more  obedient  to  existing  laws  and  more 
stubborn  in  retaining  them.  Experience,  edu- 
cation, example,  heredity,  laws,  and  religion 
combined,  however,  in  the  case  of  both  sexes 
to  give  stability  to  morals  and  acquiescence 
in  the  observance  of  moral  laws.  When  ex- 
perience, new  economic  conditions,  and  new 
religious  doctrines  altered  men's  conceptions 
of  beneficial  or  harmful  conduct  ("right"  or 
"wrong")  women  had  to  change  their  ideas 
accordingly.  Their  habit  of  obedience  now 
helped  them  to  overcome  the  adherence  to  old 
customs  which  the  selfsame  obedience  had 
created. 

-  In  the  age  of  cannibalism,  woman  consid- 
ered it  "right"  to  be  foodstuff;  in  savagery, 
to  be  a  beast  of  burden;  in  barbarism,  to  be  a 
slave.  Step  by  step,  the  treatment  of  women, 
as  well  as  that  of  the  outlawed  male  prisoners 
of  war,  was  changed.  In  both  cases,  the 
change  took  place  in  consequence  of  the 
owner's  new  ideas  as  to  the  most  profitable  use 
of  his  possession. 

The  conception  of  sex  provided  the  world 
with  an  explanation  of  its  earliest  history; 
in  other  words,  sexual  cleavage  was  considered 


Women  and  Morals  23 

the  cause  of  the  origin  and  persistence  of  the 
world.  But  although  the  female  principle 
was  worshipped  in  its  divine  form — a  cir- 
cumstance which  was  bound  to  influence 
indirectly  the  estimation  of  woman — she 
remained  in  law  and  in  life  on  a  par  with 
domestic  animals,  well  or  ill  treated  as  they. 
According  to  the  property  conceptions  of  prim- 
itive times,  wives  and  children,  slaves  and 
stock,  were  man's  possession,  to  be  used  by 
him  as  he  pleased.  He  might  sell,  maltreat, 
or  kill  them.  It  hardly  needs  to  be  pointed 
out  to  what  an  extent  such  a  view  must  have 
retarded  the  development  of  man's  altruism, 
while  it  over-developed  woman's  obedience. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  ought  to  be  stated  that 
among  many  ancient  peoples,  as  for  instance 
the  Egyptians  and  Babylonians,  women  pos- 
sessed rights,  in  social  as  well  as  in  private 
life,  which  women  of  our  age  are  still  struggling 
to  win.  Even  in  Rome  under  the  Emperors 
women  boasted  an  economic,  social,  and  do- 
mestic equality  with  men  far  surpassing  what 
they  enjoy  in  most  European  nations  of  the 
present  day. 

Marriage  was  brought  about  first  through 
spoil,  then  by  purchase,  finally  through  gift. 


24    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

From  the  property-right  in  the  wife,  thus 
invested  in  man,  rose  the  idea  that  unfaith- 
fulness was  a  theft  from  the  latter  which  he 
arbitrarily  punished  with  death.  This  con- 
ception of  unfaithfulness  as  theft  appears 
plainly  from  the  fact  that  the  man  was  at 
liberty  to  sell  or  lend  his  wife  to  other  men. 
Hence,  it  was  not  the  sharing  of  the  wife  with 
others  which  outraged  the  husband  but  that 
this  sharing  took  place  without  any  benefit 
to  him.  Women  also  had  to  submit  when 
supernumerary  or  weak  children  were  killed 
by  the  father  or  when  he  commanded  the 
mother  herself  to  take  their  lives.  With  some 
savage  tribes  the  "duty"  of  child  murder  has 
been  a  moral  law  against  which  woman 
could  not  rebel  without  incurring  penalty,  or, 
at  least,  the  contempt  of  all  "respectable" 
persons,  w 

In  no  instance  is  it  more  clearly  shown  how 
morality,  at  this  stage,  was  bound  up  with 
advantage  than  in  this  yielding  of  race-pre- 
servation to  self-preservation  when  the  latter 
demanded  the  death  of  the  offspring  either 
after  or  before  its  birth.  These  once  ' '  sacred ' ' 
duties  gradually  ceased  to  exist,  partly  be- 
cause of  easier  conditions  of  life,  but  assuredly 


Women  and  Morals  '25 

also  because  of  the  will  toward  the  ideal 
which  exists  in  human  nature.  For  morality 
in  its  noblest  forms  remains  inexplicable  unless 
one  takes  into  account  that  power  of  growth 
in  the  human  soul  which  has  led  generation 
after  generation  from  lower  religious  and 
ethical  standards  to  higher  ones  which  often 
clash  with  worldly  advantages.  This  con- 
flict has  caused  the  majority  to  advocate  the 
morality  of  expedience  in  opposition  to  the 
new  ethics.  On  the  other  hand,  however, 
every  now  and  then  some  particular  example 
has  given  impetus  to  idealism;  again  it  is 
some  rare  soul,  who  from  his  higher  plane 
has  found  the  customs  and  laws,  supported 
by  the  majority,  utterly  beneath  his  dig- 
nity, that  has  given  that  impetus.  Ob- 
viously the  growing  motherliness  of  women 
has  exerted  its  idealistic  and  elevating  influ- 
ence on  morality  with  reference  to  the  above- 
mentioned  slaughter  of  children.  Similarly 
must  the  wifely  faithfulness,  in  individual 
women,  have  sprung  from  a  tenderer  feeling 
for  the  child's  father.  But  as  a  rule  the 
chastity  of  woman  has  not  originated  in 
"woman's  nature, "  but  in  the  mortal  fear 
which  adultery  brought  in  its  trail.  That  this 


26    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

has  in  general  been  the  true  state  of  affairs 
is  best  proved  by  those  savage  peoples  whose 
unmarried  women  live  loosely,  while  the  wives 
remain  faithful  to  their  husbands.  Moreover, 
married  as  well  as  unmarried  women  have 
lacked  all  continence  when  men  have  not 
exacted  it  of  them. 

The  sphere,  on  the  other  hand,  where 
woman's  ethics  have  developed  naturally, 
that  is,  without  external  pressure,  is  mother- 
liness;  here  the  helplessness  and  loveliness  of 
the  child  have  awakened  the  instincts  of 
natural  sympathy.  Tenderness  has  created 
the  first  "social  order" — that  of  the  mother 
with  her  offspring.  Through  motherliness 
woman  later  makes  her  great  contributions  to 
civilisation. 

These  contributions  are  more  humane  cus- 
toms and  increasingly  sympathetic  feelings, 
which  gradually  are  transplanted  to  the  father 
from  the  mother.  At  this  stage  man's  pro- 
prietorship in  wife  and  children  contributed 
to  a  great  forward  step  in  his  ethical  devel- 
opment in  that  it  awoke  in  him  a  desire  to 
protect  those  dependent  on  him.  Neither 
among  ancient  peoples  nor  present-day  savages 
has  woman  been  as  barbarously  treated  as  has 


Women  and  Morals  27 

been  commonly  supposed.  Just  as  customs 
in  civilised  countries  give  to  woman  quite  a 
different  position  from  that  which  the  law 
would  indicate,  so  is  it  also  the  case  in  uncivil- 
ised lands. 

,  That  woman  carries  the  pack,  for  example, 
is  due,  as  E.  Westermarck  has  shown,  to  the 
necessity  for  the  man  to  be  instantly  prepared 
for  armed  battle.  In  this,  as  in  many  other 
cases,  "egoism"  has  a  deeper  basis  than  the 
seeming  one. 

Because  of  her  motherhood,  woman's  sexual 
nature  gradually  became  purer  than  man's. 
The  child  became  more  and  more  the  centre 
of  her  thoughts  and  her  deeds.  Thus  the 
strength  of  her  erotic  instincts  diminished. 
The  tenderness  awakened  in  her  by  her  child- 
ren also  benefited  the  father.  Out  of  this 
tenderness — as  also  out  of  admiration  for  the 
manly  qualities  which  the  father  developed 
in  the  defence  of  herself  and  her  children — 
gradually  arose  the  erotic  feeling  directed  to 
this  man  alone.  Thus  love  began.  For  ages 
it  could  not  reach  a  higher  form,  as  woman  had 
no  freedom  of  choice.  First  in  our  day  and 
among  the  highest  civilised  nations  has  woman 
become  a  free  agent  in  the  sight  of  the  law 


28    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

in  choosing  her  life  partner.  Even  among 
many  of  these  nations,  however,  the  marriage 
union  still  bears  traces  of  the  earlier  times 
when  woman  and  child  were  man's  property. 
It  is  these  traces  which,  for  the  sake  of  man's 
as  well  as  woman's  ethical  ennoblement,  we 
now  desire  to  eradicate. 

In  marriage  there  must  finally  be  perfect 
equality  between  husband  and  wife,  in  per- 
sonal freedom  of  action,  in  right  to  earnings  and 
other  property,  in  authority  over  the  children. 

For  centuries,  the  forces  have  been  at  work 
which  gradually  have  changed  marriage  con- 
ditions for  the  better.  But  in  the  last  century 
alone,  woman  has  led  directly  in  the  great 
battle  for  higher  marriage  ethics.  Before, 
she  had  contributed  indirectly  to  the  elevation 
of  such  morality.  Through  the  demonstra- 
tion of  their  worth,  in  the  first  place,  but  also 
through  the  influence  of  their  opinions,  mother 
and  wife,  daughter  and  sister,  have  remoulded  ' 
man's  appreciation  of  woman;  have  refined 
his  love  and  enhanced  his  sense  of  justice. 
Thus  the  moral  transformations  already  ap- 
parent in  laws  and  customs  have  after  all 
emanated  from  woman. 

The  influence  of  Christianity  has  been  active 


Women  and  Morals  29 

at  the  same  time  and  to  a  certain  extent. 
But  modern  moral  philosophers,  as  for  in- 
stance the  already  mentioned  Prof.  Edward 
Westermarck,  contend  that  this  influence  has 
been  overrated.  Christianity's  new  outlook 
on  moral  values  did  assuredly  exercise  a  strong 
indirect  influence.  On  the  whole  it  may  be 
said  that  heathendom  glorified  the  masculine 
virtues  while  Christianity  glorifies  the  femi- 
nine virtues.  Especially  may  the  latter  be 
observed  in  the  cult  of  the  Madonna,  which 
brought  about  a  greater  reverence  for  woman, 
particularly  for  the  mother.  But  what  the 
Church  gave  with  one  hand  it  took  back  with 
the  other.  The  ancient  world  looked  on 
marriage  as  a  duty  to  race  and  society.  The 
Pauline  Christianity  permits  it,  but  as  a 
necessary  recourse  against  temptations. 

Like  other  Asiatic  religions,  Christianity 
considered  sexual  life  as  impure;  true  purity 
was  attained  only  in  celibacy.  When,  thus, 
even  the  marriage  sanctified  by  the  Church 
was  looked  upon  as  a  lower  state,  it  stands  to 
reason  that  when  woman,  outside  of  marriage, 
tempted  man  to  unchastity,  she  was  looked 
upon,  to  use  the  strong  expression  of  an 
Apostolic  Father,  as  the  "  gate  of  the  Devil." 


30    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

Every  sexual  relation  outside  of  marriage  was 
condemned.  Thus,  if  already  during  heathen- 
dom woman's  virtue  had  been  judged  by  her 
sexual  morality,  this  became  the  case  to  still 
greater  degree  during  Christianity.  A  woman's 
''virtue"  meant  her  virginity  before  marriage 
and  her  faithfulness  afterwards.  As  long  as 
death,  the  pillory,  and  the  whipping-post  were 
the  penalties  for  women's  digressions  from  the 
path  of  virtue  it  was  a  mother's  obvious  desire 
to  train  her  daughter  strictly  to  follow  this 
path.  Uponthelossof  the  daughter's  "honour," 
the  fathers  vented  their  curse  and  society  its 
scorn;  while  the  son's  "honour"  consisted 
solely  in  general  human  or  manly  and  patriotic 
qualities. 

To  be  sure,  woman's  transgressions  against 
life,  property,  and  character  were  punished  in 
the  same  way  as  were  man's,  and  her  strength 
and  courage  were  similarly  appreciated.  But 
she  was  seldom  obliged  to  exercise  these 
virtues  or  to  resort  to  crime  for  the  sake  of 
economic  and  juridical  self-preservation,  as 
she  stood  under  the  protection  of  the  man. 
Thus  man's  virtue  consisted  in  courage, 
energy,  pride,  honour,  and  business  ability, 
while  his  sexual  morality  was  in  nowise  con- 


Women  and  Morals  31 

nected  with  his  "honour"  and  "virtue."  In 
certain  cases,  however,  for  example,  abduc- 
tion, rape,  incest,  bigamy,  and  child-murder, 
the  Church  demanded  self-control  even  of  the 
man.  And  certainly  the  Church  contributed 
greatly  to  the  elevating  of  sexual  ethics  in  tak- 
ing a  stand  for  monogamy.  But  many  of  these 
regulations  had  existed  before  Christianity,  and 
monogamy  was  already  generally  practised 
in  the  Roman  Empire. 

The  benefit  which  ethical  development 
derived  from  Christianity  through  a  stricter 
marriage  law  is  counteracted  by  the  heavy 
debt  of  the  Church  to  illegitimate  children, 
and  to  the  unhappily  married  couples  held  in 
yoke  together  in  obedience  to  the  command- 
ments of  the  Church. 

In  determining  the  influence  of  the  Church 
.  upon  sexual  morality,  account  must  be  taken 
not  only  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  innocent  just 
referred  to,  but  also  of  the  complete  falsifica- 
tion of  sex  morals  which  grew  out  of  the  ec- 
clesiastical point  of  view.  Sexual  slavery  in 
matrimony,  never  discountenanced  by  the 
Church,  intensified  in  woman  all  the  vices 
which  man  later  called  "woman's  nature." 
j.  She  gained  all  the  blessings  of  life — mother- 


32    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

hood,  housewifely  honour,  support,  protection, 
and  enjoyment — if  she  pleased  a  man  to  such 
an  extent  that  he  wanted  to  marry  her.  Thus 
her  thoughts,  feelings,  and  actions  were  all 
bent  in  one  direction — to  please.  First  in  the 
parental  home,  then  in  the  home  of  her  hus- 
band, woman's  prospect  of  attaining  her 
ends  depended  upon  her  ability  in  shamming 
obedience  and  fibbing  assent.  How  then  was 
it  possible  for  the  average  woman  to  escape 
from  becoming  fawning,  flattering,  sly,  and 
hypocritical?  A  self-control  forced  by  outer 
pressure  may,  indeed,  create  good  habits,  but 
may  equally  well  result  in  simulated  habits, 
that  is,  in  falseness.  Woman  became  a 
coward,  because  she  was  not  allowed  to  act 
on  her  own  risk  or  responsibility,  for,  if  she 
made  the  attempt,  she  was  rudely  pressed 
back  into  submission. 

To  what  extent  all  these  "  woman's  vices  " 
will  disappear,  when  the  era  of  woman's  full 
freedom  is  established,  only  the  future  can 
determine.  But  already  the  present  age  gives 
fair  promise  that  the  slanderers  of  "woman's 
nature"  will  be  found  in  the  wrong.  The 
tendencies,  considered  especially  feminine, 
to  self-indulgence,  luxury,  gossip,  and  scandal 


Women  and  Morals  33 

are  neither  womanly  nor  manly.  They  spring 
in  either  sex  from  a  low  ethical  and  intellectual 
culture.  And  as  women,  for  centuries,  have 
stood  on  a  lower  plane  of  culture  than  men  of 
the  same  class,  women  more  often  have  pos- 
sessed these  faults.  But  they  are  showing 
happy  tendencies  to  diminishing  proportions, 
the  more  woman's  culture  advances.  Con- 
stantly increasing  numbers  of  women  are 
learning,  through  scientific  studies,  for  instance, 
subjection  to  truth,  intellectual  probity,  un- 
selfish perseverance.  And  this  new  ethic 
must  also  work  a  change  in  their  private  lives. 
In  the  measure  that  the  rich  women  are 
released  from  the  housewifely  labour  through 
new  industrial  conditions  of  production,  they 
become  idle  and  incapable.  Countless  are  the 
women  parasites  who,  to  satisfy  their  craving 
for  pleasure  and  luxury,  impoverish  father  or 
husband.  These  lame  limbs  in  the  social 
organism,  which  themselves  accomplish  no- 
thing, but  for  whom  all  other  limbs  work,  are 
the  most  flagrant  example  of  womanly  im- 
morality in  the  present.  And  they  live  in 
this  immorality  without  a  trace  of  compunc- 
tion. As  a  result  of  this  parasitism,  erotic 
interest  has  become  the  whole  content  of  life 


34    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

to  these  women.  Under  the  influences  of 
many  centuries  of  sex-slavery,  the  erotic  life 
has  developed  at  the  expense  of  other  sides  of 
woman's  nature.  And  our  age  unfortunately 
still  possesses  a  class  of  women  who  as  sex 
beings  only  desire  sensual  gratification.  When 
women  have  reached  this  stage,  sex-hatred  is 
near,  a  hatred  which  is  likely  to  be  the  last 
phase  of  sex-slavery. 

There  are  no  more  dangerous  enemies  in 
the  ethical  campaign  for  the  liberation  of 
women  than  this  class  which  drags  sexual 
morality  down  to  the  animal  plane. 

II 

If,  as  some  men  contend,  the  above-men- 
tioned severe  judgments  of  woman's  morality, 
during  the  period  of  sex-slavery,  were  all 
there  was  to  say  about  this  morality,  we 
might  well  hasten  from  the  past  and  the 
present  to  the  future.  But  fortunately, 
woman's  ethics  during  pre-emancipation  have 
brought  humanity  immeasurable  values.  In 
the  first  place,  motherhood  not  only  developed 
sympathy  and  altruism,  it  also  called  forth  a 
whole  group  of  virtues  which  man  seldom 
noted,  because  to  him  they  seemed  just  as 


Women  and  Morals  35 

naturally  to  belong  to  the  woman  as  the  milk 
which  flowed  from  the  mother-breast  to  the 
lips  of  the  child.  Kant's  definition  of  virtue 
as  that  which  is  difficult,  that  which  breeds 
apathy  and  demands  self-mastery,  has  a  long 
pedigree  in  the  estimation  of  morals.  Because 
woman's  sex  virtue  was  difficult,  it  perforce 
became  her  true  "virtue."  Her  other  ethi- 
cal attainments — patience,  considerateness, 
thriftiness,  etc. — were  taken  for  granted,  were 
considered  her  natural  characteristics,  as  were 
also  her  devotion  and  willingness  to  sacrifice 
herself;  like  the  atmosphere,  they  were  only 
noticed  when  absent.  All  the  qualities  de- 
veloped in  the  care  of  children,  as  in  other 
early  spheres  of  women's  work, — farming, 
handiwork,  etc., — were  no  more  "natural" 
than  the  vices  produced  by  sex-slavery.  But 
the  stimulus  from  without  to  the  virtues 
mentioned  may  be  traced  to  self-  as  well  as 
race-preservation.  By  reason  of  the  power 
which  associations  of  ideas  wield  over  feeling, 
will,  and  thought,  these  virtues,  which  had  been 
produced  as  it  were  automatically,  were  con- 
sequently little  appreciated,  while  woman's 
relation  to  the  sex  morality  demanded  by  men 
settled  her  ethical  worth. 


36    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

» 

During  this  one-sided  moral  training,  right, 
that  is  the  sexual  self-mastery  which  once 
roused  her  disinclination  because  enforced, 
became  gradually  her  inclination,  or  in  a  more 
beautiful  word,  her  happiness.  She  realised 
that  man's  demand  that  the  children  he  sup- 
ported should  be  his  own  helped  to  inspire  his 
love  for  them,  and  that  thus  her  faithfulness 
to  him  contributed  to  their  welfare.  She 
realised  that  legalised  motherhood  gave  the 
children  the  devotion  and  protection  of  their 
father,  while  illegal  motherhood  deprived  them 
of  those  blessings.  She  realised  that  she  could 
give  the  children  better  care  because  of  the 
protection  marriage  afforded.  Faithfulness 
then  became  a  demand,  dictated  not  by 
superficial  life  alone  but  by  its  inner  reality, 
and  a  demand  which  won  her  personal  ap- 
proval. 

That  the  mother  grew  into  closer  relation- 
ship with  the  child  was  a  natural  consequence 
of  her  greater  physical  and  psychical  con- 
tribution to  it.  This  deeper  feeling  of  the 
mother  for  the  child  was,  and  is,  consciously 
and  unconsciously,  the  innermost  reason  why 
chastity  finally  has  become  with  many  women 
a  second  nature,  which  consequently  costs 


Women  and  Morals  37 

them  no  struggle  and  needs  no  coercion.  The 
feelings  of  sympathy  and  consideration  pro- 
duced by  family-life  and  housemother  duties 
scattered  women's  emotions  in  several  direc- 
tions, and  in  the  degree  to  which  they  grew 
cooler  erotically  the  more  sensitive  did  they 
become  in  reference  to  their  sexual  integrity, 
and  especially  did  they  guard  this  integrity 
when  they  themselves  loved. 

Thus  out  of  the  animal  sex  instinct  there 
gradually  evolved  human  love — that  is  the 
dedication  of  soul  and  senses  to  one  individual 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  others.  In  love  of  the 
husband,  as  earlier  in  love  of  the  child,  were 
focussed  all  the  noblest  virtues  of  woman,  Tier 
most  sublime  self-sacrifice.  Just  as  this  love 
of  husband  and  wife  also  led  her  to  criminal 
deeds  when  her  general  moral  level  was  lower 
than  that  of  her  love.  Hence,  when,  in  any 
ethical  department,  unity  is  attained  be- 
tween outer  demands  and  inner  desires, 
between  nature  and  conscience,  between  the 
needs  of  society  and  the  individual,  the  moral 
formula  is  void,  because  inner  necessity  then 
makes  it  psychically  and  physically  impossible 
to  break  the  outer  law.  Thus  true  morality 
is  attained. 


38    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

.From  woman's  realisation  of  the  fact  that 
her  sexual  morality  was  of  greater  importance 
to  the  race  than  that  of  man,  followed  her 
deliberate  or  thoughtless  acceptance  of  the 
double  standard  which  exists  even  in  our  day. 
Men  continue  to  judge  women,  and  the  latter 
to  judge  themselves  and  each  other,  according 
to  sexual  relations.  Such  relationship  has  de- 
termined women's  honour  or  dishonour,  mo- 
rality or  immorality,  in  a  mode  extremely 
perilous  to  their  general  human  morals.  The 
"fallen"  woman  was  not  she  who  lied  or  belied, 
hated  or  intrigued ;  not  she  who  at  home  daily 
behaved  in  a  way  which  made  the  home  a  hell 
for  its  inmates.  No,  not  even  she  who  stole, 
murdered  and  committed  arson;  such  a 
woman  was  only  " criminal",  not  "fallen." 
"Fallen,"  once  and  for  ever,  was  only  the 
woman  who  outside  of  marriage  allowed  her- 
self the  natural  expression  of  one  side  of  her 
life.  Fallen  is  she  even  if  the  most  soulful 
love  caused  her  "fall."  This  estimation  of 
woman's  morality  has,  consciously  and  un- 
consciously, lowered  man's  respect  for  the 
woman  he  has  seduced  or  for  the  one  who  has 
freely  given  herself  to  him.  His  conscience 
has  remained  asleep  because  neither  pub- 


Women  and  Morals  39 

lie  opinion  nor  his  mistress  has  awakened 
it. 

Hence  the  deserted  women  have  been 
tempted  to  all  the  crimes  which  result  from 
this  standard  for  woman's  morality. 

It  is  well  known  that  female  criminals — 
or  at  least  those  punished  by  law — are  every- 
where far  less  numerous  than  male  criminals. 
In  Sweden,  for  example,  only  one  in  seventy 
criminals  is  a  woman;  in  England,  on  the 
other  hand,  one  in  five,  because  there  alcohol, 
the  main  source  of  male  crime,  also  attracts 
women.  In  connection  with  woman's  lesser 
criminality  we  must  remember  her  position, 
always  more  protected  than  man's;  her 
greater  fear  of  consequences,  induced  by  her 
livelier  imagination;  but  especially  must  we 
remember  the  fact  that  when  the  man,  unable 
or  unwilling  to  work,  becomes  a  thief  or  a 
white-slaver  (according  to  recently  published 
statistics,  Chicago  alone  had  1500  white  and 
300  coloured  men  in  this  trade),  the  woman 
similarly  constituted  becomes  a  prostitute. 
Likewise  it  is  this  livelihood  which  women 
with  starvation  wages,  unemployed,  or  just 
out  of  prison  often  resort  to,  while  men  in 
the  same  predicament  choose  some  expedient 


40    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

which  brings  them  into  more  immediate 
conflict  with  the  law. 

In  judging  the  murders  and  thefts  com- 
mitted by  women,  we  must  especially  take 
into  consideration  the  influence  of  the  great 
cities.  Here  flourish  the  desire  to  attract 
-attention,  the  craving  for  luxury,  all  the 
hysterical  desires  which,  in  both  sexes,  lead 
to  crime,  or  cause  them  to  entice  each  other. 
We  know  how  often  a  woman  is  at  the  root  of 
a  man's  evil  deed,  and  a  man  behind  the 
crime  of  a  woman.  But  the  main  causes  of 
crime  in  the  large  cities  are,  and  ever  will  be, 
want,  bad  housing,  and  the  lack  of  wholesome 
joy.  That  women  of  the  labouring  classes  do 
not  oftener  become  criminals  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  atmosphere  of  the  large  cities 
is  a  high  testimony  to  woman's  morality;  we 
know,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  female 
parasites  of  luxury  in  the  great  cities  often 
turn  out  to  be  master- thieves,  in  never 
paying  their  dressmakers  and  other  pur- 
veyors. 

Nationality  must  also  be  taken  into  account 
when  we  consider  the  crimes  of  women.  As  an 
instance,  with  the  Germanic  peoples,  respect 
for  life  is  greater  than  with  the  Romanic. 


Women  and  Morals  41 

Woman,  however,  as  the  bearer  and  guardian 
of  the  new  lives,  has  everywhere  greater  re- 
spect for  life  than  man,  who  for  centuries, 
as  hunter  and  warrior,  learned  that  the  taking 
of  lives  may  be  not  only  allowed,  but  honour- 
able. Woman's  greater  reverence  for  life 
probably  also  contributes  to  the  fact  that 
suicide  is  comparatively  rare  among  women. 
Woman's  subconscious  respect  for  her  own 
body  as  the  origin  of  the  new  race,  together 
with  her  physical  timidity,  probably  restrains 
her  in  regard  to  this  crime,  which,  moreover,  by 
the  Church,  for  many  centuries,  was  consid- 
ered the  worst  of  all. 

Most  crimes  committed  by  the  female  sex, 
whether  against  written  or  unwritten  laws, 
are  in  some  way  connected  with  the  sex 
morality  of  the  time.  Abortion,  child-murder, 
and  such  crimes  are  women's  special  tempta- 
tions, particularly  in  countries  where  society 
passes  its  harshest  judgments  upon  unmarried 
mothers.  And  these  women  are  certainly 
not,  as  a  rule,  the  worst  kind.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  is  often  because  of  love  for  the  child 
that  they  commit  the  crime  which  but  a  few 
days'  care  of  the  baby  life  would  have  made 
impossible.  Prison  chaplains  have  testified 


42    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

that  the  infant  murderers  constitute  the  moral 
£lite  among  the  prisoners.  A  striking  mani- 
festation of  the  preposterousness  of  the  pre- 
sent norm  for  woman's  morality! 

An  indirect  consequence  of  the  existing 
double  standard  is,  that  most  women's  ideas 
of  right  and  honour  in  social  questions  have 
remained  just  as  dull  as  most  men's  conceptions 
in  regard  to  sexual  questions.  The  easy  con- 
science with  which  women  secretly  trespass 
against  the  law  has  often  struck  man  with 
amazement.  He  ought  instead  to  wonder 
that  women's  social  morals  are  not  worse. 
Those  thinkers  and  writers  who  have  talked 
of  woman's  "criminal  nature,"  of  her  "moral 
weakness,"  have  never  proved  anything  but 
that  the  women  from  whom  they  have 
gathered  their  experiences  have  been  ill- 
chosen  by  themselves.  It  is  still  more  amazing 
to  find  woman — who  as  citizen,  in  many 
important  questions,  is  absolutely  without 
rights — on  great  occasions  in  the  life  of  the 
nation  showing  herself  fully  equal  to  man  in  a 
sense  of  duty  and  willingness  to  self-sacrifice. 
Many  mothers,  besides  the  Spartan  and  the 
Japanese,  have  sent  their  sons  to  battle  for 
their  country;  many  women  have  become 


Women  and  Morals  43 

martyrs  for  the  truth  they  themselves  have 
embraced.  And  in  our  day  the  working- 
women  within  the  socialist  ranks  have  de- 
veloped a  sacrificing  spirit  and  a  solidarity 
which  prove  that  the  new  ethical  demands  of 
a  progressing  world  find  the  same  response 
in  women  as  in  men. 

But  on  the  whole,  the  experience  that  the 
activity  of  the  soul  obeys  the  law  of  least 
resistance  has  been  verified  even  in  regard  to 
women's  social  morals.  As  a  rule  these  have 
been  focussed  on  the  family  and  on  charity; 
among  other  reasons,  because  woman's  sense 
of  duty  seldom  finds  means  of  expression  in 
other  directions.  Man's  highest  morality,  ex- 
emplified in  his  sacrifices  for  unselfish  aims, 
his  fearless  search  for'  truth  in  the  fields  of 
thought  and  faith,  his  burning  desire  for 
justice  for  all,  has  only  in  exceptional  cases  and 
in  agitated  times  been  achieved  by  woman. 
The  essential  condition  for  all  activity,  op- 
portunity  to  act,  has  been  denied  to  woman, 
and  thus  the  stimulus  of  her  moral  ambition 
and  the  development  of  her  social  responsi- 
bility have  necessarily  been  retarded.  To  be 
sure,  social  morality  has  demanded  even  of 
woman  that  she  take  her  allotted  place  in  a 


44    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

higher  unity,  that  she,  for  instance,  in  times 
of  distress,  make  sacrifices  for  her  country  or 
her  fellows.  But  in  everyday  life  this  higher 
unity  has  never  been  too  great  to  be  embraced 
within  her  arms.  The  ethical  principle,  the 
greatest  possible  happiness  for  the  greatest 
possible  number — for  whose  realisation  the 
struggles  of  the  present  age  are  raging — this 
principle  woman  in  her  little  sphere  has  easily 
been  able  to  apply.  What  her  conscience 
has  commanded,  her  heart  has  affirmed  and 
her  reason  has  harmonised  with  her  will. 

It  does  not  necessarily  follow  that  women's 
feeling  of  responsibility,  even  in  regard  to  the 
home,  has  been  sufficient. 

The  production  of  the  requisites  of  the  home 
during  the  age  of  domestic  manufacture  de- 
veloped in  women  a  great  capacity  for  work 
which  was  also  well  compatible  with  joy  in 
work.  But  although  woman  gradually  im- 
proved the  art  of  cooking,  of  dressing,  and  of 
other  home  occupations,  we  must  admit  the 
truth  of  men's  contention  on  the  one  hand, 
that  all  ingenious  creatures  within  this  ancient 
sphere  of  woman's  labour  have  been  men,  and 
on  the  other  hand  that  the  average  level  of 
women's  proficiency  has  been  low;  and  again, 


Women  and  Morals  45 

that  in  the  departments  where  the  duty  and 
custom  of  centuries  ought  to  have  taught  them 
efficiency,  the  majority  still  bungle.  This  is 
especially  true  in  the  field  of  education.  Not 
only  is  there  a  dearth  of  creative  genius  among 
women  educators,  but  more,  the  majority 
of  women  have  not  an  inkling  even  of  the 
purport  of  true  education.  The  same  may 
indeed  be  said  of  many  men  who,  as  a  rule, 
do  not  accomplish  the  best  possible  in  their 
sphere  of  work.  Yet  the  difference  in  woman's 
and  man's  business  pride  is  just  as  indisput- 
able as  its  reason  is  easily  found.  Man's 
work  is  appraised  by  customers  and  employers, 
while  woman's  work  has  been  uncontrolled  and 
irresponsible,  a  field  of  activity  where  man's 
discontent  alone  could  cause  an  improvement 
if  needed.  Woman's  want  of  economic  means 
also  combined  to  make  her  practical  contri- 
butions toward  improved  labour  methods  of 
rare  occurrence.  But  the  most  important 
reason  was,  and  is,  that  woman's  conservatism 
found  the  old  customs  good  enough,  and  that 
no  one  has  expected  of  her  a  higher  insight  than 
the  advice  inherited  from  mother  and  grand- 
mother in  regard  to  the  care  of  children  and 
home. 


46    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

The  economic  and  moral  consequences  of 
woman's  lack  of  experience  in  handling  money 
are  everywhere  noticeable.  What  she  ought 
to  purchase  for  money  provided  by  the  hus- 
band; how  to  discriminate  between  essentials 
and  non-essentials;  absolute  or  temporary 
needs;  when  to  save  or  when  to  spend — all 
these  are  conceptions  of  duty  in  domestic 
management  yet  lacking  in  women.  In  these 
questions  of  right,  women  are  yet  sinning 
greatly  through  thoughtlessness  and  ignorance, 
shiftlessness  and  laziness.  This  is  where  they 
ought  to  love  their  neighbour;  that  is,  the 
physical  and  spiritual  well-being  of  those 
nearest  to  them.  And  these  sins  are  not  most 
rare  among  classes  where  means  are  plentiful 
to  provide  for  the  health  and  comfort  of  the 
family. 

Women's  flippant  self-content  in  the  ful- 
filment of  their  duties  remained  with  them 
when  they  began  to  enter  the  field  of  remun- 
erative labour.  Women  accustomed  to  man- 
ual labour  soon  learned  through  necessity  to 
produce  satisfactory  work.  But  women  of 
the  upper  classes — for  instance,  widows  and 
daughters  who,  upon  the  death  or  failure  of 
the  family  supporter,  were  compelled  to  earn 


Women  and  Morals  47 

a  livelihood — were  in  no  way  prepared  for  this 
necessity.  When  free  to  choose,  their  first 
concern  was  to  find  the  easiest  and  most 
refined  work,  not  that  which  they  could  do 
well.  They  expected  the  same  privileges  as 
the  home-worker;  for  example,  indifference 
on  the  part  of  their  employers  to  promptness, 
freedom  to  rest  unnecessarily,  to  waste  time, 
never  to  be  ready  at  the  time  promised,  etc. 
And  especially  did  the  notion  prevail  that  the 
remunerative  labour  could  be  carried  on  with 
the  same  dilettantism  as  the  home  work. 

Stern  necessity  has  taught  women  more  and 
more  to  discard  these  bad  habits,  and  now 
they  frequently  excel  men  in  moral  devotion 
to  business.  In  connection  with  the  demand 
for  professional  training  as  a  condition  for 
women's  employment,  their  labour  efficiency 
shows  a  rapid  growth.  Wives  and  daughters 
from  the  well-to-do  classes,  who  have  never 
come  in  contact  with  the  hard  conditions  of 
life,  because  a  man  has  protected,  and  de- 
cided for,  them;  who  have  never  received  the 
economic  ethical  education  which  only  per- 
sonally earned  means  can  bestow;  who  have 
never  handled  any  but  " pocket  money," 
"gifts"  from  men, — such  women  have  learned 


48    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

in  an  amazingly  short  time  to  become  capable 
of  work,  to  become  economically  independent 
members  of  society. 

Women  had  grown  accustomed  even  to 
conceal  as  "un womanly "  their  longing  for 
knowledge,  work,  and  economic  independence. 
During  the  days  of  sex-slavery  woman  learned 
"instinctively  to  hide  all  which  she  thought 
might  detract  from  her  in  men's  eyes,  even 
her  best  qualities  when  she  imagined  they 
might  incur  man's  ridicule  or  displeasure/'1 
Economic  necessity  has  now  forced  her  to 
become  more  frank.  In  a  generation,  en- 
terprise, venturesomeness,  and  self-confidence 
have  grown  apace  with  competence.  Less  and 
less  often  do  you  hear  a  woman  sigh,  "I  want 
to  so  much,  but  I  cannot"  or  "I  may  not"; 
more  and  more  often  do  you  hear  her  express 
the  words  formerly  considered  "unwomanly," 
"I  want  to,  and  what  I  want  to  do  I  can  do. " 

Among  the  economic  ideas  with  a  moral 
bearing  which  it  would  seem  that  women 
might  have  been  able  to  originate  is  co-opera- 
tion. Yet  they  have  failed  to  take  the  initia- 
tive. Since  the  movement  gained  a  start, 
however,  women  of  the  present  day  have 

'Havelock  Ellis. 


Women  and  Morals  49 

begun  wisely  to  work  together  to  improve 
domestic  as  well  as  social  work.  Here  they 
have  found  new  use  for  the  most  desirable 
qualities  developed  in  the  best  of  them  from 
the  time  of  primitive  home-production:  fore- 
thought, thrift,  managing  ability,  and  sense 
of  beauty,  all  virtues  which  they  have  intensi- 
fied by  a  methodicalness,  promptness,  and 
discipline  not  possessed  by  their  grandmothers. 

To  what  an  extent  these  new  women  still 
have  retained  their  devotion  and  willingness 
to  sacrifice  themselves  is  best  shown  by  the 
many  women,  supporters  of  families,  who  now 
work  outside  of  the  home  for  those  dependent 
upon  them,  with  as  much  tenderness  as  they 
formerly  worked  within  the  four  walls  of  the 
home. 

It  remains  for  women,  whether  working  in 
public  or  private  life,  to  learn  another  duty, 
the  art  of  living.  To  overwork  until  a 
nervousness  sets  in  which  finally  precludes  self- 
control;  to  throw  one's  self  into  social  activ- 
ities to  such  an  extent  that  the  home-life 
suffers ;  to  allow  wrangling,  nagging,  and  fault- 
finding to  mar  the  family  life;  to  bring  pres- 
sure and  constraint  to  bear  where  no  ethical 
values  are  to  be  gained;  to  miss  a  sense  of 


50    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

proportion  between  labour  and  rest — all  these 
are  shortcomings  in  the  art  of  living,  an  art 
which  is  sadly  undeveloped  in  modern  women 
as  well  as  in  men.  The  good  old  phrase 
"charity  begins  at  home"  needs  recognition 
as  a  serious  principle  of  duty.  Perhaps  the 
most  immoral  consequence  of  the  patriarchal 
family  conception  lies  in  the  fact  that  for  ages 
the  family  ties  have  been  valued  as  immutable 
assets  and  therefore  without  apprehension 
hidden  in  the  bottom  of  the  chest  as  so  much 
cold  gold.  One  locks  it  in;  it  is  not  supposed 
to  need  nursing.  Even  those  who  do  not  fail 
in  the  duty  of  "loving  their  neighbours "  fall 
short  in  fulfilling  the  duty  of  being  lovable 
at  home  as  abroad. 

The  art  of  living  demands  that  our  interest 
in  bringing  forth  flowers  in  our  family  life  equal 
the  interest  we  take  in  bringing  them  forth 
in  our  window  gardens.  So  long  as  their  home- 
life  (esthetics  have  not  become  ethics,  women 
need  not  expect  \ ••  t&bands,  children,  or  servants 
to  feel  happy  in  the  homes  of  their  creation. 
With  women  as  with  men,  with  the  old  as  with 
the  young,  with  the  heads  of  the  household 
as  with  the  servants,  the  dying  out  of  the 
patriarchal  ens'  ,/ns  and  the  fixed  and  authori- 


Women  and  Morals  51 

tative  philosophy  of  life  have  brought  in  their 
train  a  serious  levity  in  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual, the  home,  and  society.  Everywhere 
subjective  inclination  is  followed  in  lieu  of 
objective  norms.  No  one  need  fear  but  what 
new  principles  will  gradually  crystallise  out  of 
all  this  formlessness,  so  that  the  human 
relationships  will  again  be  invested  with  a 
new  and  noble  garb.  But  thus  far  the  self- 
denial  and  self-control  which  made  family  life 
beautiful  in  the  past  are  sadly  lacking  in  the 
home  habits  and  social  customs  of  the  present 
day.  And  such  traditions  are  not  merely 
empty  shells.  They  enclose  and  guard  a 
kernel  of  ethical  value.  They  are  educational 
means  of  spiritual  and  moral  import  which  the 
modern  women  utilise  neither  in  their  own 
interest  nor  in  that  of  their  children.  The 
need  of  a  change  in  this  respect  is  already  so 
deeply  felt  that  we  hear  everywhere  calls  for 
a  renaissance  of  the  home  and  social  life. 

A  more  individualised  ethical  conviction 
as  the  sole  guide  in  the  great  private  decisions 
of  life;  a  more  and  more  uniform  morality 
in  public  life;  a  good  tone  in  social  life  common 
to  all  classes,  sexes,  and  ages, — this  is  the  goal 
women  should  set  for  their  contribution  to  the 


52    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

growth  of  morals.  If  women  really  desire 
to  "save  home  and  society,"  as  they  have 
stated,  while  demanding  new  rights,  then  the 
road  to  such  salvation  lies  in  a  more  deliberate 
guarding  of  the  best  in  the  old  conditions 
combined  with  all  the  good  gifts  of  latter-day 
evolution.  Women  must,  as  a  moral  duty, 
combat,  in  themselves  and  in  others,  inclina- 
tion not  only  to  shirk  work,  but  to  bustle  in 
work;  they  must  consider  as  sins  all  habits 
which  disturb  the  healthful  normal  proportions 
in  life.  They  must  favour  all  tendencies  to  the 
saving  of  the  human  energies  for  higher  pur- 
poses; they  must  further  all  kinds  of  co- 
operation which  purposes  to  satisfy  best  and 
most  economically  all  the  needs  of  the  day; 
and  not  least  the  need  of  rest,  and  joy  in  work. 
The  women  who  stand  highest  do  already 
exercise  these  duties,  but  on  the  whole,  the 
conception  of  duty  in  this  respect  is  confused 
by  the  Christian  doctrine  of  self-sacrifice  on 
the  one  hand  and  the  zeal  for  social  work  on 
the  other. 

in 

Since  women  have  undertaken  remunerative 
labour,  outside  of  the  home,  an  occupation 


Women  and  Morals  53 

forced  upon  them  by  the  changed  economic 
conditions,  methods  of  production,  and  their 
simultaneous  struggles  for  emancipation,  the 
problems  of  women's  morals  have  multiplied 
and  women's  conceptions  of  morals  have 
broadened.  Out  of  the  demand  for  the  right 
to  work  grew  the  realisation  of  the  duty  to  work; 
from  the  realisation  of  this  duty,  the  honour 
of  labour  was  born,  and  from  the  honour  of 
labour  the  step  to  social  work  was  short. 

The  more  women  have  developed  their 
common  human  qualities,  the  more  have  they 
been  right  in  their  demand  that  their  morality 
be  measured  by  another  measure  than  that  of 
sex  morality,  and  also  that  man's  sex  morals 
should  be  considered  in  the  judging  of  his 
morality.  Thus  the  modern  woman  has  en- 
deavoured both  to  widen  the  sphere  of  her 
moral  duty  and  to  narrow  man's  moral  liberty. 

In  other  words,  woman  has  had  the  audacity 
to  apply  the  principle  of  individuality  even  to 
sex  morals  and  thus  to  proclaim  that  neither 
in  man  nor  in  woman  should  blind  obedience 
to  moral  traditions,  but  the  verdict  of  the 
individual  conscience  in  the  first  place,  and 
the  effect  on  society  in  the  second  place,  be- 
come the  determining  factor.  The  influence 


54    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

on  society  must  without  question  determine 
our  objective  ethics,  but  such  precepts  need 
not  always  nor  everywhere  coincide  with  the 
subjective  moral  obligation.  The  trend  of  a 
woman's  will,  her  ethical  ideal,  must  be  taken 
into  account  when  judging  her  actions  as  has 
long  been  done  in  the  case  of  man.  In  the 
sphere  of  morality,  woman  will  no  longer  be 
content  to  cultivate  the  sympathetic  feelings 
and  sex  virtue.  She  wants  to  express  her 
whole  self  in  her  life-plan;  she  will  be  guided 
sometimes  by  altruism,  sometimes  by  egoism, 
with  the  right  to  decide  when  the  one  or  the 
other  will  best  subserve  her  larger  life.  This 
has  led  the  modern  woman  into  numberless 
conflicts  between  individual  and  social  duty. 
The  pictures  Ibsen  has  drawn  of  such  conflicts 
have  shaken  our  consciences,  but  even  earlier 
they  have  appeared  in  literature  when  the 
latter  has  been  great  enough  to  mirror  the 
whole  life  of  contemporary  times. 

Some  of  woman's  new  moral  battles  have 
taken  place  in  the  sphere  of  national  life;  for 
example,  the  Russian  women's  participation 
in  the  political  revolution,  often  in  the  form 
of  nihilistic  attempts  on  life.  We  have  an- 
other example  in  the  English  suffragette's 


Women  and  Morals  55 

mode  of  warfare.  A  comparison  favours  the 
Russian  women,  for  the  reason  that  they  have 
tried,  through  their  actions,  to  expose  extreme 
wrongs  to  all,  wrongs  which  would  not  be 
known  except  through  deeds  of  violence. 
The  English  women  have  set  out  from  the 
wrong  notion  that  because  men,  driven  to 
political  despair,  have  committed  deeds  of 
violence,  women  also  should  in  cold  blood 
conceive  and  organise  similar  outrages.  Thus 
they  do  not  act  rashly,  but  with  great  fore- 
thought, driven  onward  by  the  delusion  that 
they  cannot  win  the  political  right  to  prove 
how  much  better  a  world  created  by  both 
men  and  women  would  be,  unless  they  use  the 
lowest  weapons  employed  by  men  in  this 
" man-made  world." 

The  enthusiasm  and  generosity  even  unto 
death  of  the  suffragettes  are  as  strong  as  their 
social  thinking  is  weak.  To  commit  crime 
for  the  sake  of  gaining  the  right  to  benefit 
society — in  other  words,  to  apply  the  Jesuit 
maxim,  "The  end  justifies  the  means" — is 
ethically  so  untenable  that  we  can  overthrow 
the  fallacy  at  once  with  the  question,  May 
not  these  women,  following  out  their  mode 
of  thinking,  later  commit  election  frauds  or 


56    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

other  demoralising  actions  during  political 
campaigns?  In  America,  women  have  already 
cheated  at  elections.  And  why  should  they 
not  do  so  everywhere  if  they  were  able  thereby 
to  assure  the  election  of  the  candidate  in 
favour  of  their  noble  reform  plans?  The  un- 
conditional no,  with  which  even  the  suffragists 
answer  this  question,  stamps  the  entire  suffra- 
gette morality  as  a  remainder  of  the  masculine 
morality  in  politics,  a  morality  which  would 
stoop  to  acquire  justice  and  power  through 
violence.  To  be  sure,  Spencer's  opinion  that 
all  violent  transformations  in  the  social  order 
are  harmful,  is  historically  proved  to  be  an 
exaggeration.  But  history  has  also  proved 
without  a  doubt  that  the  fruits  of  a  successful 
revolution  are  easily  lost,  for  the  psychological 
reason  that  those  who  long  have  lacked  rights 
and  then  take  them  by  storm,  seldom  are  able 
to  keep  them,  and  are  even  less  able  to  use 
them  wisely.  The  social  reconstruction  we 
look  forward  to  through  woman's  suffrage  will 
prove  a  structure  of  loose  bricks  without 
cement  to  hold  them  together,  unless  a  higher 
morality  than  man  has  shown  in  the  past 
constitute  its  binding  element. 

In  passing,  it  should  be  emphasised  that  the 


Women  and  Morals  57 

very  idea  of  the  emancipation  of  woman  has 
been  hitherto  one  of  the  greatest  stimuli  of 
higher  idealism  in  modern  times,  and  thus  a 
strong  force  for  moral  advance.  Those  who 
are  able  to  dream  have  had  the  most  beautiful 
visions  of  the  woman  of  the  future,  just  as 
the  socialist  in  his  dreams  sees  the  perfected 
society  of  the  future.  True,  neither  the  fu- 
ture woman  nor  the  coming  state  will  ever 
reach  the  beauty  of  our  dreams.  But  the 
dream  has  uplifted  the  dreamers  ethically,  and 
given  strength  and  renewed  strength  to  mil- 
lions of  tired  struggling  men  and  women  to 
persevere  in  the  battle  without  which  neither 
the  future  woman  nor  the  future  state  ever 
will  become  anything  but  dreams.  But  are  we 
to  believe  that  the  deeds  of  the  suffragettes, 
by  virtue  of  the  ideal  sacrificial  spirit  which 
stimulates  them,  are  "the  stuff  that  dreams 
are  made  of  "  ?  Hardly. 

The  present-day  women,  who  thus  through 
their  sense  of  justice  have  become  criminals, 
are  fortunately  few  compared  with  all  those 
who,  with  the  same  burning  will  to  self- 
sacrifice  and  with  wholly  clean  weapons,  have 
fought  for  their  sexual  rights,  and  for  many 
common  human  rights.  These  latter  women 


58    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

ought  to  have  atoned  in  the  eyes  of  men  for 
their  sisters'  Jesuit  morality. 

For  more  than  a  hundred  years,  women — at 
first  always  called  "un womanly "  and  "  im- 
moral"— have  worked  unceasingly  for  the 
elevation  of  social  morals.  We  find  them 
active  in  movements  for  better  care  of  the 
sick  and  prisoners,  in  combating  alcohol  and 
prostitution,  in  improving  conditions  of  labour, 
housing,  and  general  sanitation.  They  are 
working  for  the  protection  of  motherhood  and 
childhood,  for  the  education  and  healthful 
recreation  of  the  masses  and  of  children. 
They  share  generously  in  the  care  of  the  poor 
and  aged.  They  are  a  powerful  factor  in  the 
question  of  peace  and  arbitration.  It  is  not 
with  words  alone  that  they  have  proved  their 
right  to  full  citizenship;  an  enormous  sum  of 
ethical  and  altruistic  exertions  already  sup- 
ports such  a  claim.  And  this  manifestation 
of  energy  has  brought  about  a  corresponding 
improvement  in  women's  social  responsibility, 
an  improvement  which  has  reacted  favourably 
also  upon  men,  who,  in  this  department,  have 
not  taken  as  broad  initiatives  as  women. 
We  may  well  aver  that  men's  and  women's 
ethical  views  combined  have  accomplished 


Women  and  Morals  59 

that  awakening  of  the  social  conscience  which 
has  manifested  itself  more  generally  in  the 
last  century  than  before  in  a  thousand  years. 
Social  motherliness  has  made  women's  struggle 
for  liberty  the  loveliest  synthesis  of  egoism 
and  altruism. 

George  Eliot's  words  already  quoted  are 
true  also  of  the  modern  women :  the  more  they 
have  freed  themselves  from  the  authority  of 
ecclesiastical  Christianity,  the  more  eager  they 
become  to  convert  the  commands  of  Christian 
love  into  social  actions.  And,  fortunately, 
women's  practical  sense  has  prevented  them 
from  following  the  programme  of  a  Tolstoy, 
which  is  too  incompatible  with  real  life  to 
serve  as  a  foundation  for  creative  social  work. 
Women's  contributions  to  this  work  have 
ushered  in  the  "moral  sans  sanction  ni  obli- 
gation1' which  Guyau  preached.  A  moral 
founded  on  the  sympathetic  instincts,  the 
feeling  of  solidarity,  the  spirit  of  mutual 
helpfulness,  because  these  categories  best 
promote  the  well-being  of  the  individual  as 
.  well.  We  observe  the  realisation  of  Guyau's 
optimistic  assurance:  that  sympatHy,  love, 
and  pity  more  and  more  become,  not  only  a 
matter  of  conscience,  but  a  source  of  happiness. 


60    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

Social  motherliness,  unfortunately,  has  its 
hands  still  bound  in  countless  cases  where  they 
are  most  needed.  And  if  ever  a  right  has 
been  demanded  from  altruistic  motives,  it  is 
true  in  the  case  of  woman  suffrage  and  the 
married  woman's  right  over  self  and  property. 


IV 


Women's  social  morality,  like  the  bean  of 
the  Hindu  fakir,  lias  thus  grown  from  night 
to  morning  to  a  tall  stalk.  But  we  must  not 
forget  that  the  stalk  throws  a  shadow! 

As  soon  as  one  is  not  content  with  a  dog- 
matic simplification  of  the  life  problems,  the 
woman  morality  of  our  day  becomes  the  most 
complex  of  all  modern  problems.  No  factor 
must  be  left  out  of  account  if  this  is  to  tally 
with  truth. 

And  the  truth  is  that  the  social  work,  just 
as  much  as  the  remunerative  work,  has  be- 
come a  natural  expression  of  women's  self- 
assertion  and  of  their  desires  to  utilise  all  those 
personal  forces  to  which  may  be  applied  the 
Dutch  proverb  rust  roest  (rest  rusts,  or,  in 
rest  rust  appears).  In  the  meantime  other 
forces  have  remained  practically  unused.  Such 


Women  and  Morals  61 

opponents  to  feminism  as  contend  that 
woman's  political  influence  will  debilitate  the 
people's  virility,  weaken  their  laws,  retard 
their  national  self-assertion,  are  less  likely  to 
prove  true  prophets  than  those  who  fear  the 
opposite:  that  women  will  become  more  and 
more  manlike. 

Public  life  has  become  a  strong  stimulus,  a 
stimulus  no  longer  found  in  the  home.  Ambi- 
tion has  developed  into  a  passion  which  drives 
women,  as  well  as  men,  to  great  works — and 
small  deeds.  Formerly  competitors  in  the 
race  for  men,  they  are  now  competing  in  the 
race  for  social  tasks  and  distinctions.  The 
social  morality  of  the  younger  women  has 
improved  more  than  their  personal  morality, 
which  is  the  same  as  that  of  their  mothers  and 
grandmothers.  The  older  generation  still  sees 
duty  in  the  direction  of  overcoming  tempta- 
tions to  anger  and  vengeance,  arrogance  and 
vanity,  temper  and  self-deception.  The  new 
ethical  will  of  the  younger  generation  is  for 
knowledge,  work,  and  social  activity.  But  all 
this  gives  little  time  for  the  daily  self-examina- 
tion so  necessary  for  persistent  efforts  toward 
ideal  goals.  Sweden's  great  saint,  Birgitta, 
took  a  bitter  herb  in  her  mouth,  each  time 


62    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

she  was  angry,  to  chastise  her  tongue.  The 
woman  of  the  present  day  has  not  even  time 
to  bite  her  tongue  upon  like  occasions!  All 
that  which  formerly  belonged  to  the  concep- 
tion of  sanctification  and  made  man  in- 
trospective, has  small  place  in  his  present 
superficial  life.  Ever  fewer  present-day  men 
and  women  find  time  for  the  individual  culture 
which  makes  the  soul  more  serene,  gentle, 
wise,  and  at  the  same  time  broad ;  which  makes 
the  personality  harmonious  through  its  eman- 
cipation from  externals.  And  yet  there  is 
nothing  we  need  more  in  our  strenuous  age 
than  moral  culture,  or,  if  we  prefer  so  to  call 
it,  the  morals  of  culture.  Our  lack  of  self- 
discipline  has  been  given  a  medical  not  a 
moral  name;  it  is  called  " nervousness "  and 
"  hysteria  "  and  is  given  sanatorium  treatment. 
But  this  is  far  from  being  the  only  cure 
needed  to  restore  balance  to  this  age  suffering 
from  mental  St.  Vitus  dance.  The  successes 
of  Christian  Science  and  similar  movements 
depend  upon  their  teaching  the  duty  of  con- 
tinuous self-examination  and  self-control,  that 
these  are  made  the  condition  for  the  dietetics 
of  the  soul  about  which  the  German  physician, 
Feuchtersleben,  long  ago  wrote  a  splendid 


Women  and  Morals  63 

little  book.  Lately  two  Danes,  L.  Fejlberg  and 
C.  Lambek,  have  written  excellent  books 
dealing  with  the  greatest  possible  yield  of 
spiritual  forces  and,  concerning  a  form  of  cul- 
ture of  personality  as  yet  unknown  to  most 
people.  I  mean  a  culture  productive  of  values 
which  cannot  be  called  directly  moral  because 
they  determine  all  the  conditions  of  the  soul. 
We  may  learn  an  art  of  living  by  which  the 
soul  can  grow  in  alertness  and  candour,  in  mo- 
bility and  warmth,  in  height  and  depth.  And 
this  art  women  should  be  the  first  to  acquire. 
If  we  prefer,  we  may  call  it  the  gymnastics  of 
the  soul  by  which  the  spiritual  "organism" 
is  kept  elastic  and  succulent  instead  of  grow- 
ing stiff  and  dry.  We  may  make  our  feelings 
warmer,  our  interests  richer,  our  mental  con- 
ceptions clearer,  our  observations  broader, 
our  sentiments  more  serene,  our  judgments 
wiser,  our  will  more  swiftly  steered  toward 
worthy  goals.  Only  by  considering  such  a 
culture  of  the  resources  of  our  soul  as  an  ethical 
duty  can  we  develop  the  fulness  of  personality 
indicated.  The  essential  requisites  for  such 
culture  are  psychologic  insight,  determination, 
peace,  and  time.  But  how  is  it  possible  for 
the  ever  busy  mortals  of  to-day  to  take  cognis- 


64    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

ance  of  all  this?  Ask  an  active  club  member 
if  she  has  drawn  deeply  once  a  year  from  some 
well  of  wisdom  in  her  library;  or  if  Sunday  is 
made  a  day  of  rest  to  body  and  soul;  or  if  she 
once  a  week  receives  a  deep  impression  from 
nature  or  music,  or  if  when  seeking  such  inspi- 
ration, she  has  had  the  inner  repose  which 
allows  the  impressions  to  flood  the  soul,  and 
not  only  to  reach  the  eye  and  the  ear. 

If  women's  new  social  morality  shall  in 
truth  lift  humanity  not  only  out  of  misery, 
but  up  to  a  nobler  spiritual  affluence,  then 
their  own  soul  culture  must  attain  heights  not 
yet  dreamed  of  by  the  majority  even  of  our 
most  excellent  women  to-day.  The  dishearten- 
ing evidence  of  the  truth  that  woman's  soul- 
culture  has  not  developed  to  the  extent  that 
her  desire  for  freedom  has  grown  is  found  in 
the  domain  of  sexual  ethics.  First  we  observe 
as  a  sad  result  of  present  economic  conditions 
an  increasing  number  of  women  who,  although 
well  fitted  to  propagate  the  race,  yet  invol- 
untarily are  doomed  to  remain  dry  branches  on 
the  tree  of  life.  The  consequence  is  a  mani- 
fold degeneration  even  in  the  sphere  of 
morality,  because  the  never  appeased  yearn- 
ing for  love  and  motherhood  causes  many 


Women  and  Morals  65 

abnormal  situations  and  mental  conditions. 
Further  we  find  married  women  losing  ability, 
or  will,  to  become  mothers,  some  on  account 
of  overwork,  others  on  account  of  a  frivolous 
desire  for  pleasure.  Finally  we  note  how  in 
the  last  hundred  years,  the  severe  labour  con- 
ditions wreck  mothers  as  well  as  children. 
It  will  take  another  century  of  unceasing 
effort  to  overcome  all  this  psychical  and 
physical  degeneracy. 

This  demoralisation  alone  shows  us  plainly 
enough  to  what  a  pass  the  world,  governed 
exclusively  by  men,  has  come. 

But  besides  these  facts  of  a  purely  statis- 
tic nature,  which  prove  that  "evolution"  is 
not  always  synonymous  with  progress,  there 
are  other  evidences  that  do  not  admit  of 
being  stated  in  figures,  which  give  similar 
testimony. 

George  Eliot  was  the  highest  representative 
of  womanly  conservatism  in  the  sphere  of 
morality.  Another  woman,  George  Sand, 
is  the  fiery  proclaimer  of  woman's  right  to 
freedom,  particularly  in  the  same  department. 
She  utters  one  of  the  few  truths  which  have 
eternal  life,  when  she  calls  legal  marriage 
without  mutual  love  immoral,  but  true  love 

5 


66    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

even  without  legal  marriage  moral.  The 
consequence  of  this  maxim  is  that  all  the 
remainders  of  sex-slavery  in  present-day 
marriage  make  it  immoral  as  an  institution 
even  when  the  individuals  stand  higher  than 
the  institution.  Only  the  free  giving  under  per- 
fect equality  can  make  the  marriage  relationship 
moral,  that  is,  found  it  on  an  inner  necessity, 
not  an  external  coercion.  But  unfortun- 
ately George  Sand  herself  showed  by  the  long 
string  of  her  misadventures  that  the  great- 
est problem  is  to  find  and  to  keep  the  one 
and  true  love.  Alas,  she  became  herself  an 
argument  against  her  creed,  an  argument 
which  may  be  condensed  into  the  question: 
Is  love  always  moral?  Are  many  successive 
unions  really  of  higher  value  for  the  life 
enhancement  of  the  individual  and  the  race 
than  the  unbroken  or  loveless  marriage? 
And  even  if  we  answered  yes  for  the  individuals 
themselves  there  is  the  next  question:  Are 
the  children  better  served  by  the  successive 
marriages  and  free  unions  than  by  a  home 
where  the  parents  are  held  together  not  by  love 
but  by  a  sense  of  duty  toward  the  children? 

At  present  these  questions  can  only  be  an- 
swered in  each  separate  case. 


Women  and  Morals  67 

But  in  spite  of  all  the  confusion  and  error 
brought  about  by  the  new  sex  morals,  it  is 
nevertheless  on  these  that  woman  must  build 
further  in  order  to  secure  for  the  future  a  higher 
morality.  This  good  must  include  the  best  of 
what  we  have  gained  genetically  in  the  matter 
of  sex  morality,  namely,  a  love  invested  with 
a  will  to  faithfulness  and  continuity — together 
with  the  best  of  the  new  morality,  namely, 
the  conviction  that  chastity  consists  in  the 
harmony  between  soul  and  senses,  and  that 
no  sexual  relationship  is  moral  without  such 
harmony.  Women's  greatest  ethical  task 
is  first  to  combine  these  two  principles  and 
then  to  bring  them  into  full  accord  with 
reality. 

Hitherto  women,  unfortunately,  have  not 
proved  themselves  competent  to  this  mission. 
Their  instincts  are  injured,  partly  by  centuries 
of  asceticism  and  resignation,  partly  by  the 
present  day's  violent  rebellion  against  these 
very  limitations.  Love,  in  common  with  other 
great  powers, — as  the  demands  for  freedom, 
and  justice, — is  a  valuable  incentive  to  ethical 
action  only  when  dictated  by  objective  as 
well  as  subjective  morals  in  harmony  with 
each  other.  In  other  words,  incentive  for 


68    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

actions  that  directly  may  promote  the  richer 
life  of  the  individual  while  by  their  conse- 
quences they  similarly  must  benefit  the  whole. 
That  two  persons'  love  may  cause  other  per- 
sons to  suffer — just  as  the  demands  of  justice 
and  liberty  often  have  caused  such  sufferings — 
does  not  prove  that  any  of  these  feelings  in 
themselves  have  been  illegitimate.  When 
choosing  our  ethical  positions  we  must  not 
allow  these  sufferings  to  become  the  deter- 
mining factor.  And  on  the  whole  they  have 
never  had  such  an  effect.  Indeed  the  road  of 
all  ethical  progress  has  been  marked  by  the 
sufferings  of  individuals,  of  classes,  and  of 
whole  nations.  The  question  to  be  answered 
is:  Will  the  action  which  brings  pain  to  others 
promote  an  advancing,  not  a  retrogressive, 
evolution?  But  this  examination  has  been 
shirked  by  many  who,  in  word  or  deed,  have 
led  the  struggle  against  sex-slavery.  During 
this  time  of  sex  emancipation,  we  have  come  to 
see  that  the  sex  morality  beaten  into  woman 
was  neither  so  general  nor  so  deep-rooted  as 
one  might  have  expected  after  all  the  ages  of 
pressure  of  law  and  custom.  Very  few  of  the 
women  who  have  given  themselves  in  free  love 
to  a  man  have  had  a  right  to  plead  the  words 


Women  and  Morals  69 

in  which  Kant's  disciple,  Schiller,  expressed 
a  great  truth: 

A  man  who  loves  passes  so  to  speak  beyond  the 
bounds  of  all  other  ordinances  and  stands  beneath  the 
laws  of  love  alone.  There  is  an  exalted  condition 
in  which  many  other  duties,  many  other  moral 
standards,  are  no  longer  binding  upon  him. 

The  feelings  that  have  determined  the  actions 
of  these  women  have  not  brought  forth  "  an  ex- 
alted condition. "  Their  love  has  never  been 
the  great  love  the  essential  characteristic  of 
which  is  its  ability  to  kindle  soul  and  senses, 
but  also,  beyond  that,  to  increase  the  personal- 
ity's value  to  life,  not  only  life's  value  to  the 
personality  of  the  lover.  Above  all,  the  great 
love  also  kindles  that  tenderness  which  is  indis- 
pensable to  lovers.  In  the  great  love,  desire 
becomes  loathing  if  the  soul  remains  solitary. 
With  most  present-day  so-called  "  soul-mates" 
the  right  to  happiness  has  revealed  itself  as 
a  paltry  desire  for  stimulation  in  new  enjoy- 
ments. The  demand  to  "live  one's  life"  has 
resulted  in  a  more  and  more  vulgar  gratifica- 
tion of  an  ever  more  inane  desire.  Not  even 
The  Great  Passion  ever  grazed  these  peo- 
ple with  its  wing;  much  less  did  The  Great 


70    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

Love  ever  enter  their  dreams.  Soulless  lust, 
idleness,  sentimentality,  flights  of  fancy,  van- 
ity, the  excitement  of  flirtation  and  sport 
— all  of  these  have  been  the  cause  of  hasty 
divorces,  loose  relations,  repeated  trial  mar- 
riages, all  distinguished  by  a  greater  minus 
of  soul  and  a  steadily  growing  plus  of  coarse- 
ness. How  many  wives  are  there  not — and 
among  them  even  mothers,  who  in  their 
children  possess  the  richest  life  stimulus — or 
how  many  home  girls  with  splendid  life  possi- 
bilities, who,  more  or  less  secretly,  lead  the  life 
of  a  courtesan.  The  only  difference  is  that 
these  women  are  not  paid.  On  the  contrary, 
they  themselves  often  pay,  that  is,  in  form  of 
"loans,"  which  those  invertebrates,  to  whom 
alcohol,  nicotine,  silk-linings,  and  automobiles 
are  necessities  of  life,  do  not.  hesitate  to 
solicit,  once  these  women  have  become  their 
"  comrades. "  These  weaklings  often  belong 
to  literary  and  artistic  bohemian  circles  where 
men  have  the  leisure  to  win  women  from  the 
social  strata  here  referred  to.  These  milksops 
try  to  make  up  for  their  lack  of  creative  genius 
by  all  kinds  of  pleasure  sensations,  especially 
the  enjoyment  of  women.  Our  age  has  also 
produced  a  type  of  women,  the  counterpart  of 


Women  and  Morals  71 

these  moral  mollusks  and  with  the  same  kind 
of  life  cravings  equally  intense.  Add  the 
pristine  feminine  needs  of  luxury  and  pleasure, 
and  you  meet  a  class  of  modern  women  of 
the  same  variety  as  the  men  referred  to  who 
use  the  property  of  their  mistresses  for  their 
private  ends  or  coax  their  earnings  from 
them. 

It  is  not  alone  man's  craving  for  pleasure 
that  women  have  made  their  own,  but  also 
the  masculine  bad  manners  in  outward  de- 
meanour. One  had  hoped  that  women's  com- 
panionship with  men  would  check  coarseness. 
And  this  is  true  in  coeducational  schools. 
But  where  freer  forms  for  social  intercourse 
prevail,  we  observe  nonchalant  and  flirtatious 
young  women  adopting  the  manners  of  their 
masculine  companions.  Many  young  girls  re- 
semble noisy,  ill-mannered  schoolboys.  The 
real  reason  for  this  is  the  womanly  fear 
of  displeasing  the  man  friends  by  so-called 
"womanishness."  But  in  proportion  as  the 
social  intercourse  between  the  sexes  loses  in 
courteousness  and  modesty,  the  erotic  life 
sinks  to  a  lower  plane.  If  the  young  women 
want  to  prevent  this,  they  must  raise  the 
standard  for  men,  not  lower  their  own. 


72    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

Obviously  the  love  which  is  lacking  in  will 
for  continuity  must  also  be  devoid  of  the 
yearning  for  perpetuity  which  reaches  after 
the  child.  Motherhood  is  avoided  or  pre- 
vented. Sometimes  it  is  the  man  who  for 
selfish  reasons  is  undesirous  of  progeny.  In 
such  cases,  he  has  himself  to  blame  if  the  wife 
in  love  adventures  seeks  the  life  interest  which 
a  child  would  have  given  her.  All  this  is 
called  the  new  immorality  of  our  age.  But  we 
know  very  well  that  it  is  not  new;  history  often 
shows  similar  conditions  during  transitional 
periods.  I  would  not  have  touched  upon  them 
here  were  it  not  that  the  modern  courtesans 
define  their  mode  of  life  as  the  new  morality 
instead  of  owning  to  its  ancient  designation: 
"unchasttiy."  Through  this  confusion  of 
ideas  the  lives  of  many  worthy  men  and  women 
are  ruined.  And  the  consequence  will  not  be 
a  new  morality,  but,  on  the  contrary,  a  violent 
reaction  back  to  the  old  sex  morality! 

The  revision  of  this  old  morality  among  its 
many  other  good  results  has  changed  our  point 
of  view  in  regard  to  the  "fallen11  women,  so 
named  even  when  in  true  love  they  became 
mothers.  In  the  fifties,  Mrs.  Gaskell  in  her 


Women  and  Morals  73 

novel  Ruth,  and  Hawthorne  in  The  Scarlet 
Letter,  made  the  first  earnest  attempts  to  effect 
a  revision  of  the  judgment  over  unmarried 
mothers,  a  revision  which  has  been  going  on 
ever  since.  The  most  important  new  gain  in 
the  department  of  sexual  ethics  is  this  very 
changed  attitude  toward  unmarried  mothers, 
who,  together  with  their  children,  are  now 
beginning  to  get  the  care  long  refused  them  by 
society.  But  even  in  this  department  the 
humaneness  of  modern  times  has  been  at  fault 
through  too  much  sentimentality  and  too  little 
forethought.  For  instance,  we  call  mother- 
hood holy,  oblivious  of  all  the  miserable 
human  progeny  which,  married  as  well  as 
unmarried,  mothers  cast  upon  society.  A 
greater  severity  in  the  judgment  of  such 
mothers  must  supplement  the  new  conception 
of  the  unmarried  mothers'  status;  otherwise, 
the  intrinsically  necessary  protection  of  moth- 
ers will  result  in  a  diminished  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility. What  can  be  more  immoral 
than  to  ask  the  strong  and  healthy  members  of 
society  to  burden  themselves  with  increasingly 
heavy  taxes  in  order  to  support  the  vicious 
human  offscum,  and,  moreover,  allow  this  class 
to  propagate  its  kind?  The  bygone  custom 


74    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

of  putting  children  to  death  showed  a  much 
higher  morality  from  the  point  of  view  of 
social  ethics.  The  changed  conception  of  sex- 
ual morals  has  influenced  also  our  attitude 
toward  the  woman  prostitute.  Van  Lennep's 
book  Klaasje^  Levenster  filled  a  crying  need  in 
that  it  acquainted  " virtuous"  women  with 
the  fact  that  there  are  many  innocent  victims 
among  the  prostitutes.  And  besides  the  direct 
prey  of  the  white  slave  traffic,  there  are  the 
indirect  victims  of  the  starvation  wage  still 
suffered  by  millions  of  women.  Happily  a 
Dumas,  a  Tolstoy,  and  other  writers  have 
shown  us  that  great  love  and  genuine  human- 
ity may  be  the  possession  of  the  so-called 
harlot.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  a 
number  of  books  that  give  a  very  false  and 
unwholesome  representation  of  women  prosti- 
tutes, books  which  would  have  us  believe  that 
a  brothel  is  a  leaden  casket  containing  nothing 
but  genuine  pearls. 

All  this  confusion  in  thought  and  action, 
where  sexual  ethics  are  concerned,  only  goes 
to  prove  that  women;  bewildered  by  centuries 
of  sex-slavery,  have  been  unable  to  lead  the 
sexual  emancipation  with  a  firm  purpose. 
Many  of  them  have  been  overhasty  in  con- 


Women  and  Morals  75 

demning  the  monogamous  marriage,  the  evo- 
lutionary attainment  of  ages,  and  which,  all 
its  mistakes  notwithstanding,  invested  the 
husband  and  father  with  solemn  responsi- 
bilities. Too  many  have  shown  scant  respect 
for  the  duty  to  faithfulness  and  sexual  self- 
control,  which,  when  everything  is  said, 
contributes  great  ethical  values.  In  a  word, 
women  have  not — to  the  extent  hoped  for 
thirty  to  forty  years  ago — shown  themselves 
capable  of  a  moral  development,  at  once  pro- 
gressive and  conservative.  Earlier  feminists 
firmly  believed  that  love  in  its  highest  form 
would  be  secured  by  women's  emancipation; 
they  believed  that  women's  self-support  would 
eliminate  all  but  love-marriages;  that  their 
equality  with  men  in  studies  and  work,  in 
home  and  society,  would  bring  about  purer  / 
and  higher  morals,  a  more  beautiful  home-life, 
a  more  perfect  motherhood.  They  little  sus- 
pected, what  has  here  been  pointed  out,  that 
the  self-support  for  many  women  has  been  so 
severe  a  task  that  marriage,  on  any  condition, 
meant  a  deliverance;  that  women's  purity 
and  self-control,  far  from  reforming  men,  fre- 
quently became  a  total  loss;  that  the  great 
love,  for  which  the  new  women  were  to  save 


76    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

themselves,  often  degraded  into  erotic  adven- 
tures; that  motherhood  often  is  looked  upon 
as  an  unwelcome  interference  in  work  or 
pleasure. 

But  even  if  the  first  apostles  of  feminism  had 
suspected  alLthis  it  would  no  more  have  si- 
lenced them  than  Jesus,  had  he  been  told  that 
auto-da-fe  and  inquisition  would  follow  Chris- 
tianity. Because  faith,  among  other  things, 
signifies  strength  to  endure  the  greatest  of  all 
disappointments — the  shortcomings  of  the  dis- 
ciples. None  of  the  worst  disciples  of  woman- 
emancipation,  not  any  of  the  errors  brought 
about  by  the  new  morality,  can  nullify  the 
truth  that  only  woman's  perfect  equality  with 
man  in '  education  to  work,  in  opportunity  to 
work,  in  wages  for  work,  in  duty  to  work,  is 
the  fundamental  condition  for  final  victory 
over  sexual  immorality,  legal  or  illegal. 

Every  transition  has  brought  in  its  train 
similar  confusion  of  ideas  and  laxity  in  morals. 
Our  race  has  never,  in  any  province,  reached 
the  high  morality  born  from  within  until  the 
bands  which  upheld  the  morals  imposed  from 
without  have  first  been  loosened.  At  pres- 
ent we  are  living  in  a  chaos  where  ancient 
and  low  instincts,  in  women  as  in  men,  fer- 


Women  and  Morals  77 

tilised  with  new  and  high  ideas,  have  given 
birth  to  many  monstrous  forms  of  life.  First, 
when  these  high  new  ideas  have  grown  from 
thought  to  feeling  and  from  feeling  to  instinct, 
the  new  morality  will  gather  strength  and 
stability.  This  morality  is  forcing  its  way 
in  two  hitherto  quite  diverging  lines:  the  indi-  ~\ 
victual's  ethical  right  to  self-assertion  in  love, 
and  society's  right  to  limit  this  self-assertion  on 
behalf  of  the  welfare  of  the  race.  The  first  de-  / 
mand  is  based  upon  the  growing  insight  into 
the  immense  differences  between  individuals  in 
regard  to  the  constitution  of  their  souls  in 
general  and  to  their  erotic  needs  in  particular. 
The  second  demand  follows  the  evolutionary 
birth  of  a  new  ethical  principle — eugenics. 
This  idea  shows,  by  the  swiftness  with  which 
it  is  gaining  ground,  that  the  morality  which 
is  organically  bound  up  with  life  possesses  a 
power  of  growth  quite  independent  of  estab- 
lished laws,  customs,  and  creeds.  The  moral 
laws  of  eugenics  sometimes  cause  one  of  those 
so-called  "  crimes "  which  suddenly  reveal  the 
existence  of  a  new  moral  condition  of  mind. 
Such  ethical  "crimes"  are  repeated  until  they 
give  rise  to  new  conceptions  of  right  and  finally 
to  new  laws.  A  "crime"  of  this  sort  is  com- 


78    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

mitted  by  the  mother  who  puts  to  death  a 
child  which  is  in  every  particular  unfit  for  life. 
Another  such  "crime" — where  the  motive  is 
individual  egotism  in  compact  with  social 
altruism — is  the  deliberate  motherhood  of 
certain  unmarried  women.  Working  hard 
for  their  livelihood  these  women  have  after- 
wards supported  their  children  and  sometimes 
also  the  children's  father  when  his  inability  or 
disinclination  to  work  rendered  him  without 
means.  Many  earnest  authors,  for  instance, 
Grant  Allen  in  The  Woman  who  Did,  and 
the  Dutch  Cecilia  de  Jongbeck  van  Donk  in 
her  book  The  Dawn,  have  described  a  "crime" 
of  this  kind, — the  moral  motherhood  of  an 
unmarried  woman ;  and  at  the  same  time  they 
have  shown  the  moral  blindness  of  those  who 
condemn  such  a  one  while  they  are  glad  to  see 
their  own  and  their  friends'  daughters  make 
"good  marriages"  with  degenerate  but  rich 
men.  In  many  cases  it  is  still  considered  a 
moral  "crime"  for  a  wife  to  dissolve  a  mar- 
riage which  she  feels  to  be  degrading  when 
there  is  no  spiritual  bond. 

These  divorces  are  deliberate  indictments 
of  the  proprietorship  that  marriage  yet  is 
supposed  to  invest  in  man.  Such  divorced 


Women  and  Morals  79 

wives  have  often  exchanged  an  economically 
splendid  existence  for  a  life  of  severe  labour, 
all  on  account  of  their  conscience. 

Another  ethical  " crime "  is  "race  suicide" 
in  cases  where  the  mother  knows  that  the 
child  would  suffer  degeneracy  in  consequence 
of  the  father's  iniquities.  Ethical  may  also 
be  called  women's  revolt  against  the  unrea- 
sonable waste  of  energy,  personal  and  social, 
in  bringing  more  children  to  life  than  may 
well  be  cared  for. 

Woman's  new  realisation  of  her  human  right 
to  self-preservation,  of  her  duty  to  cultivate 
her  spiritual  and  physical  energies  and  to  use 
them  also  in  her  own  interest,  not  alone  in  that 
of  the  race,  is  perfectly  compatible,  even  when 
revealed  in  the  "  crimes "  mentioned,  with  the 
new  eugenic  will:  to  produce  a  qualita- 
tively better,  not  a  quantitatively  larger,  new 
race. 

That  these  new  ethics  sometimes  make  the 
actions  of  the  most  moral  women  similar  to 
the  actions  of  the  most  immoral  ones  ought 
at  least  not  to  excite  those  men  and  women 
who  on  the  one  hand  advocate  capital  pun- 
ishment for  single  murder,  yet  on  the  other  hand 
glorify  murder  en  masse  in  war!  In  the  latter 


8o    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

case,  one  is  told  that  the  motive  determines 
ethics.  But  the  very  same  people  refuse  to 
consider  the  motive  in  connection  with  women* s 
above-mentioned  ' '  crimes. ' ' 

During  all  these  passionate  conflicts  about 
sexual  morality,  we  are,  on  the  whole,  quietly 
and  constantly  advancing  in  regard  to  the 
elevating  of  future  generations.  A  more 
rational  care  of  children  has  already  been 
introduced,  a  forward  step  demonstrable  by 
the  decrease  of  infant  mortality.  Further 
advance  may  be  recognised  in  the  fact  that 
many  women  and  men  now  break  an  engage- 
ment or  a  marriage  when  they  find  out  that 
either  party  suffers  from  some  hereditary 
disease.  Increasingly  numerous  are  the  men 
and  women  who  abstain  from  erotic  relation- 
ship when  they  know  themselves  victims  of 
such  heredity.  To  be  sure  the  great  majority 
are  still  ignorant,  or  unscrupulous,  in  regard  to 
the  commands  of  eugenics.  But  public  opin- 
ion is  fast  developing  in  this  respect  and  is 
already  beginning  to  influence  conventions, 
which  in  turn  will  influence  the  laws.  The 
demand  of  eugenics  will  finally  become  just 
as  deep-rooted  an  instinct  as  the  duty  to 
defend  the  home  country  against  outer  foes, 


Women  and  Morals  81 

who,  however,  not  even  in  the  bloodiest 
battles,  take  as  many  lives  or  waste  as  many 
homes  as  do  alcoholism,  syphilis,  tuberculosis, 
and  mental  diseases.  A  thoughtful  modern 
person  is  tempted  to  agree  with  Spitteler, 
who  presented  a  satirical  description  of  a 
prize  competition  that  resulted  in  the  creation 
of  the  world.  In  this  competition  the  laurel 
wreath  was  accorded  to  the  artist  who  created 
a  small  perfect  earth  inhabited  by  only  twelve 
supermen;  which  served  as  a  suitable  antithe- 
sis to  the  present  bungle-globe,  swarming  with 
mortals. 

Every  person  whose  mind  is  not  paralysed 
by  the  present  nationalistic  war  colonisation 
and  industrial  politics,  but  who  can  still  bend 
his  thoughts  toward  culture,  must  recognise 
that  the  improvement  of  the  race  can  only  take 
place  through  a  strict  selection  of  the  human 
material;  hence  the  diminution  in  nativity 
need  not  in  itself  be  a  national  evil  symptom, 
but  what  is  dangerous  and  immoral  is  that 
the  worst  element  is  allowed  to  multiply  with- 
out restrictions  while  the  women  best  fitted 
for  motherhood  are  unable  or  unwilling  to 
fill  the  high  office;  and  finally  that  those  of 
them  who  do  become  mothers  are  beginning 


82    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

to  preach  a  "mother's  sacrificial  duty"  not 
to  bring  up  the  children  herself  but  to  leave  it 
to  the  community  to  train  and  educate  them 
collectively.  In  later  pages  I  shall  return  to 
this  question  which  is  for  humanity  so  vital. 
Here  I  wish,  only  for  the  sake  of  completeness, 
to  emphasise  the  fact  that  this  at  the  same 
time  is  the  most  important  of  all  woman 
questions.  The  answer  to  this  question  will 
determine  whether  women  will  continue  to 
be  the  standard  bearers  of  the  morality  they 
attained  while  upbuilding  home  and  family, 
or  if  their  morals  will  become  more  manlike  in 
good,  and  also  in  evil,  since  every  virtue  that 
possesses  substantiality  also  has  its  shadow. 
Only  he  who  believes  in  "divine"  moral  laws 
can  doubt  that  women's  self-assertion  must, 
on  the  whole,  help  to  elevate  humanity.  But 
the  very  one  who  hopes  this  will  likewise  hope 
that  the  ancient  womanly  virtues — the  moth- 
erly sacrificial  spirit,  and  the  wifely  faith- 
fulness, these  virtues  which  were  woman's 
before  any  one  had  dreamt  of  her  independ- 
ence— never  shall  rank  among  "outgrown" 
virtues,  which  a  later  age  calls  "weaknesses." 
On  the  contrary,  these  virtues  will  be  all 
the  more  needed  when  love  is  made  the 


Women  and  Morals  83 

ethical  norm  for  the  relationship  between  men 
and  women.  Notwithstanding  the  countless 
individual  differences  which  will  appear  more 
and  more  in  these  relationships,  they  are 
governed  by  a  law  as  inflexible  as  the  neces- 
sity for  the  presence  of  both  oxygen  and  nitro- 
gen in  the  air,  namely,  that  love  implies  a 
"will  to  eternity "  in  the  dual  desire  for  faith- 
fulness between  husband  and  wife  and  for 
projected  life  in  the  new  race.  No  emancipa- 
tion must  make  women  indifferent  to  sexual 
self-control  and  motherly  devotion,  from  which 
some  of  the  highest  life  values  we  possess  on 
this  earth  have  sprung.  Let  us  remember  that 
the  best  qualities  of  the  sailor  are  still  needed 
by  the  aviator,  though  the  latter  has  a  wider 
space  in  which  to  sail.  Unless  we  realise  this 
truth  now  we  will  learn  it  later  by  the  number 
of  victims  sacrificed. 


We  are  not  helped  to  an  understanding 
of  the  modern  woman's  moral  uncertainty 
by  the  talk  of  the  religious  disbelief  and 
the  evil  of  the  times.  We  face  the  results 
of  the  fact  that  women  neither  have  been,  nor 
are  yet,  fully  liberated;  the  fact  that  for  thou- 


84    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

sands  of  years  they  have  learned  to  consider 
their  value  as  sex  beings  as  that  by  which  they 
must  buy  all  life  enhancement  whether  noble 
or  ignoble ;  the  fact  that  sex  has  been  the  only 
sphere  of  woman's  power,  and  that  these  1 
circ^ll&t'anar  liave  made  her  '  over-sexed "  | 
as  Charlotte  Perkins  Oilman  rightly  has 
pointed  out.  Hence  it  is  unreasonable  to 
speak  of  woman's  morality  in  its  present 
phase  as  of  her  new  morals.  Only  a  long 
enjoyed  liberty  will  clearly  show  the  social 
and  psychological  results  of  the  efforts  of  the 
present  age  to  equalise  sex  character,  which, 
during  the  long  period  of  woman's  bondage, 
has  been  so  differently  developed  in  man  and 
woman.  First  after  some  centuries  of  ethical 
and  social  culture  on  a  par  with  man's,  and 
of  legal  and  economic  equality,  through  a 
work  which  is  so  well  paid  that  it  does  not 
exhaust  either  body  or  soul — first  then  will  it 
be  known  whether  women  have  developed  a 
new  "nature,"  or  if  the  typical  womanliness 
remains  typical  even  of  the  daughters  of  the 
future.  But  in  our  calculations  of  probabili- 
ties we  must  not  forget  that  within  the  next 
hundred  years  we  shall  witness  another  evolu- 
tion which  will  have  an  enormous  influence  just 


Women  and  Morals  85 

in  regard  to  woman's  prospective  "nature." 
I  mean  the  transformation  of  our  conceptions 
of  property  and  conditions  of  labour.  There 
is  no  more  ethically  promising  aspect  of 
woman's  liberation  than  the  r61e  it  plays  in  j 
the  great  democratic  revolution;  that  it  coin- 
cides quite  naturally  with  the  increasingly 
individualised  socialism  and  the  increasingly 
socialised  theory  of  evolution.  Nowadays  we 
know  that  the  "  struggle  for  existence "  is 
counterbalanced  by  mutual  helpfulness;  that 
the  right  of  the  stronger  need  not  rob  the  weple 
of  his  rights.  Woman  has  good  prospects 
during  her  economic  activity  to  escape  demo- 
ralisation through  unearned  riches,  unchecked 
competition,  unbridled  enterprise.  For  all 
this  will  gradually  pass  and  simultaneously 
the  growth  of  women  will  experience  self- 
confidence  that  comes  from  economic  inde- 
pendence and  the  consciousness  of  being 
productive  members  of  society.  If  we  com- 
pare the  innumerable  wives,  who  still  do  an 
enormous  daily  labour  in  the  homes  without 
receiving  any  other  compensation  than  the 
husband's  gifts,  with  their  self-supporting 
sisters,  we  best  realise  the  significance  of 
economic  independence  for  morality.  We 


86    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

grasp  how  the  whole  woman  sex  will  rise 
to  an  ethically  higher  plane  through  the  in- 
dependence that  comes  from  well-paid  work, 
when  she  need  no  longer  use  her  cunning  or 
her  beauty  to  cajole  the  man  into  giving  her 
what  she  needs  for  her  development  or  her 
pleasure.  To  the  extent  that  animals  de 
luxe  and  beasts  of  burden  in  the  shape  of  idle 
and  worn-out  women  vanish,  sexual  morality 
will  automatically  rise  above  its  worst  blemish: 
the  commercial  value  of  the  woman^body. 

But,  some  one  asks,  is  the  social  morality 
really  such,  in  a  majority  of  women,  that, 
having  attained  their  full  equality  with  man, 
legally,  economically,  socially,  and  politically, 
they  are  likely  to  deliberately  collaborate  in 
the  social  reconstruction?  May  not  women 
in  the  classes  which  ought  to  be  leading — 
because  they  possess  the  highest  culture — 
show  the  same  lack  of  social  conscience  as 
the  men  of  the  same  classes?  To  be  sure 
women  are  now  showing  great  solidarity  in 
the  struggle  for  their  rights.  Women  of  all 
classes,  labourers  and  duchesses,  work  together 
in  the  suffrage  campaign  and  all  national 
antipathies  are  bridged  over  by  the  common 


Women  and  Morals  87 

interest.  And  already  this  solidarity  is  in 
itself  an  ethical  gain.  But  has  it  really 
penetrated  deep  enough  into  women's  con- 
sciences, so  that,  when  their  own  aims  are 
won,  it  has  power  to  overcome  the  class  ego- 
ism which  sustains  the  class  struggle  and  the 
national  egoism  which  maintains  war?  More- 
over a  victory  is  often  followed  by  fatigue 
and  apathy.  Hence  women's  sacrifices,  en- 
thusiasm, and  co-operation  during  their  strug- 
gle for  equal  rights  do  not  prove  that  women 
really  have  risen  to  a  higher  altruism,  a  wiser 
sympathy,  a  common  fellow-feeling.  The 
deciding  evidence  will  be  the  use  women  make 
of  their  new  rights.  In  this  respect  the  present 
shows  discouraging  as  well  as  hopeful  signs. 
"  The  gravest  danger  is  that  so  many  of  the 
\  best  women  do  not  realise  the  duties  of 
>J/  I  motherhood,  which  are  the  most  valuable  to 
the  race,  to  the  nation,  and  to  humanity  at 
jarge.  Hence  it  is  all-important  to  regain  on 
a  higher  plane  the  ethical  synthesis  of  self- 
assertion  and  self-sacrifice  which  motherhood 
accomplishes  already  in  earlier  stages. 

Ten  years  ago,  in  my  book  Love  and  Mar- 
triage,  I  presented  a  reform  programme — further 
developed  in  the  following  essays — in  opposi- 


88    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

tion  to  collective  upbringing  of  the  children 
and  work  outside  of  the  home  for  the  mothers 
— the  socialist  and  woman's-right  platform 
common  at  the  time.  In  the  meantime,  the 
ideas  of  evolution  and  eugenics  have  emphas- 
ised the  importance  of  the  child;  the  suffer- 
ings  of  children  have  received  more  attention ; 
it  has  become  recognised  that  education  is 
fraught  with  great  responsibility  and  con- 
sequently there  is  need  of  thorough  prepara- 
tion in  the  educator.  I  have  recently  noticed  a 
socialist  writer,  of  the  capacity  of  Mr.  Wells, 
point  out  that  parentage  "as  a  private  enter- 
prise, managed  at  the  parents'  own  risk/'  must 
cease  to  exist.  As  a  curative,  he  offers  the  same 
solution  that  I  do,  and  emphasises  strongly 
that  socialism  disapproves  both  of  the  childless 
loose  sexual  relationship  and  of  the  patrK 
archal  family  rights.  Socialism  wishes  to  in- 
stitute a  free  marriage  in  which  husband  and 
wife,  in  every  respect  perfect  equals,  with 
social  subsidies  and  responsibilities  to  so- 
ciety, will  be  well  able  to  bring  up  the  new 
generations. 

For  the  time  being,  the  conflicts  may  become 
sharper    between    subjective    and    objective 


Women  and  Morals  89 

morality;  between  the  rights  of  the  individual 
and  the  rights  of  society;  between  woman's 
demands  for  herself  and  the  demands  made 
upon  her  by  the  family.  The  easiest  stage 
of  woman  emancipation  will  soon  be  a  thing 
of  the  past,  the  stage  of  struggle  for  rights. 
Then  follows  the  most  difficult  period  of 
struggle  for  production ;  for  simultaneous  crea- 
tion of  men  and  works,  or  two  creative 
impulses  which  cannot  at  the  same  time  be 
wholly  satisfied  nor  be  entirely  segregated  to 
fill  two  different  periods  in  a  woman's  life. 
Many  women  have  become  morally  vacillating 
just  because  of  this  dilemma.  Some  have 
tried  to  get  out  of  it  by  treating  love  and 
motherhood  as  incidentals.  But,  if  the  race  is 
to  rise  ethically,  women  should^not_learn  of  men 
to  take  love  and  parental  duty  a,s  an  episode. 
On  the  contrary,  man  should  learn  of  woman 
to  consider  it  as  a  matter  of  vital  importance. 
In  this  respect,  we  note  encouraging  signs  of 
the  times  among  young  men,  who  in  many 
respects  have  adopted  a  higher  sex  morality, 
probably  because  evolutionistic  philosophy 
has  entered  more  deeply  into  the  minds  of  the 
young  men,  and  probably  also  because  the 
greater  difficulty  to  win  a  woman's  love  has 


- 


90    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

refined  man's  erotic  emotions.  It  is  a  sad 
feature  in  the  history  of  woman's  morality 
that  it  is  now  often  the  woman  who  makes 
immodest  advances  to  the  man>  and  that 
when  a  child  is  the  result  the  man  is  often 
more  pleased  than  the  woman.  Obviously 
nothing  will  more  certainly  destroy  what  pre- 
ceding generations  have  tried  to  build  up  in 
manly  sex  morality  than  that  women  them- 
selves take  this  morality  lightly. 

Not  until  women  look  upon  love  and 
motherhood  as  holy  powers  of  life,  to  be 
reverenced  as  solemn  and  sacred,  shall  the 
sexual  morality  of  both  sexes  follow  an 
ascending,  not  a  descending  curve.  And 
whatever  our  philosophy  of  life  otherwise  may 
be,  we  must  all  confess  ourselves  believers 
in  what  a  German  thinker  has  called  "Der 
Ascendismus, "  if  life,  and  particularly  moral 
life,  is  to  have  a  meaning.  Only  by  improving 
the  quality  of  the  human  race  in  successive 
generations,  through  a  more  and  more  re- 
sponsible, enlightened,  and  loving  parentage, 
shall  we  attain  a  more  beautiful  future.  No 
individual  morality,  be  it  that  of  men  or 
women,  is  sufficient  to  raise  the  value  of  life, 
even  if  the  world  were  delivered  from  capital- 


Women  and  Morals  91 

istic  production,  armed  peace,  and  senseless 
war.  All  that  the  women  now  promise  them- 
selves and  humanity  of  a  new  order  of  exist- 
ence in  which  purity  and  responsibility  shall 
characterise  the  relationship  of  the  sexes,  as 
love  and  justice  the  life  of  the  peoples,  will  not 
materialise  in  the  near  future,  even  if  all  the 
women  of  the  world  are  enfranchised.  And 
naturally  so,  because  the  social  and  political 
work  of  the  best  women  can  no  more  succeed 
in  changing  the  morality  of  the  majority 
than  the  work  of  the  best  men  has  succeeded 
in  so  doing,  neither  will  external  transforma- 
tions change  the  fact  that  the  majority  of 
women  and  men  stand  on  a  low  plane  physi- 
cally, morally,  and  intellectually;  hence  im- 
proved social  conditions  cannot  eliminate 
want  and  crime. 

Yet  all  that  we  dream  of  the  future  may  at 
last  be  realised,  and  realised  through  the 
women,  if  the  mothers  of  the  next  thousand 
years  will  consider  as  their  highest  happi- 
ness the  duty  to  promote  in  their  children  the 
evolution  necessary  to  attain  ahigher  humanity. 

Motherhood,  which  is  the  fountainhead  of 
altruistic  ethics,  and  which  has  been  wo- 
man's particular  field  for  moral  action,  must 


92    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

consequently  become  the  culmination  of  her 
functions  as  an  ethically  thinking,  feeling, 
and  acting  being.  But  not  merely  in  a  direct 
sense.  When  women,  in  youth  and  early 
middle  age,  have  fulfilled  their,  at  that  time, 
highest  moral  duty — to  bear  and  rear  the  new 
race — and  in  this  work  have  employed  all  the 
culture  which  their  new  rights  enable  them  to 
acquire,  then  the  time  for  spiritual  motherhood 
has  arrived  and  will  occupy  the  latter  part 
of  their  lives.  Frederik  van  Eeden  has  well 
expressed  the  function  of  this  motherhood 
in  words  something  like  these: 

In  the  age  when  woman,  according  to  the  old  theory, 
was  worn  out  and  done  with,  she  may  now  possess  a 
new  and  great  mission:  to  increase  the  common  fund 
of  human  knowledge  by  contributing  her  own  stored 
treasures  of  intuitive  wisdom. 

It  was  woman's  intuition  which  the  ancients 
worshipped  in  the  form  of  the  Nome  and  the 
Sybil.  It  is  this  intuition  which  again  must 
be  respected  and  active  in  order  that  humanity 
may  rise  ethically  and  aesthetically  as  it  has 
already  risen  materially,  intellectually,  and, 
especially,  technically. 


Women  and  Morals 

Men  have  gathered  the  materials  for  build- 
ing a  more  beautiful  and  moral  world — it  can 
be  built  only  by  women  and  men  working 
together. 


II 

Motherliness 

Womanliness  means  only  motherhood; 
All  love  begins  and  ends  there. 

ROBERT  BROWNING, 


95 


FIFTY  years  ago  no  one  would  have  thought 
of  writing  about  the  nature  of  mother- 
liness.  To  sing  of  motherhood  was  then  just 
as  natural  for  ecstatic  souls  as  to  sing  of  the 
sun,  the  great  source  of  energy  from  which  we 
all  draw  life;  or  to  sing  of  the  sea,  the  mys- 
terious sea,  whose  depth  none  has  fathomed. 
Great  and  strong  as  the  sun  and  the  sea, 
motherhood  was  called;  just  as  tremendous 
an  elemental  power,  a  natural  force,  as  they — 
alike  manifest,  alike  inexhaustible.  Every 
one  knew  that  there  existed  women  without 
motherly  instincts,  just  as  they  knew  of  the 
existence  of  polar  regions  on  the  globe;  every 
one  knew  that  the  female  sex,  as  a  whole,  was 
the  bearer  of  a  power  which  was  as  necessary 
for  life's  duration  as  the  sun  and  the  sea,  the 
power  not  only  to  bear,  but  to  nurture,  to  love 
and  rear  and  train.  We  knew  that  woman, 
as  a  gift  from  Nature,  possessed  the  warmth 

7  97 


98    The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

t 

which,  from  birth  to  death,  made  human  life 
human;  the  gift  which  made  the  mother  the 
child's  providence,  the  wife  the  husband's 
happiness,  the  grandmother  the  comfort  of  all. 
A  warmth  which,  though  radiating  most 
strongly  to  those  gathered  around  the  family 
hearth,  also  reached  those  outside  the  circle 
of  her  dearest,  who  have  no  homes  of  their 
own,  and  embraced  even  the  strange  bird 
as  it  paused  on  its  journey.  For  motherliness 
was  boundless;  its  very  nature  was  to  give, 
to  sacrifice,  to  cherish,  to  be  tender,  even  as  it 
is  the  nature  of  the  sun  to  warm,  and  of  the 
sea  to  surge.  Fruitfulness  and  motherhood 
received  religious  worship  in  the  antique 
world,  and  no  religious  custom  has  withstood 
the  changes  of  the  times  so  long  as  this. 

Many  ideas  have  become  antiquated  and 
many  values  have  been  estimated  afresh,  while 
the  significance  of  the  mother  has  remained 
unchallenged.  Until  recently,  the  importance 
of  her  vocation  was  as  universally  recognised 
as  in  the  days  of  Sparta  and  Rome.  The 
ideas  of  the  purpose  for  which  she  ought  to 
educate  her  sons  changed,  but  the  belief  in 
the  importance  of  training  by  the  mother 
remained.  Through  the  Madonna  Cult  the 


Motherliness  99 

Catholic  Church  made  motherhood  the  centre 
of  religion.  The  Madonna  became  the  symbol 
of  the  mother-heart's  highest  happiness  and 
deepest  woe,  as  embodied  in  the  Virgin- 
Mother's  holy  devotion  at  the  manger  and  the 
sacred  grief  of  the  Mater  Dolorosa  at  the  cross. 
The  Madonna  became  the  symbol  of  woman's 
highest  calling,  that  of  giving  to  humanity 
its  saviours  and  heroes — those  heroes  of  the 
spirit,  so  many  of  whom  have  borne  witness  to 
the  importance  of  the  intrinsic  power  of 
womanhood  as  a  guide,  not  only  to  earthly 
life,  but  also  to  those  metaphysical  heights 
about  which  the  greatest  of  them  all  has  tes- 
tified that:  Das  Ewigweibliche  zieht  uns  hinan. 
Das  Ewigweibliche  is  nothing  but  the  well 
of  maternal  tenderness,  that  power  of  love 
whereby  woman's  intuition  takes  a  short  cut 
to  the  heights  which  man's  thought  reaches 
by  a  more  laborious  path.  Great  poets  have 
perceived  that  motherhood  is  not  only  the 
mighty  race-renewer.  B  jornstjerne  B  jornson 
says  that  "all  creating  is  of  mother  origin"; 
in  other  words,  that  all  the  qualities  which 
the  child  craves  of  the  mother,  the  work  craves 
of  its  creator:  the  vision,  the  waiting,  the 
hope,  the  pure  will,  the  faith,  and  the  love; 


ioo  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

the  power  to  suffer,  the  desire  to  sacrifice,  the 
ecstasy  of  devotion.  Thus,  man  also  has  his 
"motherliness, "  a  compound  of  feelings  cor- 
responding to  those  with  which  the  woman 
enriches  the  race,  oftener  than  the  work,  but 
which  in  woman,  as  in  man,  constitutes  the 
productive  mental  process  without  which 
neither  new  works  nor  new  generations  turn 
out  well.  Man's  experience  of  the  mother's 
influence  on  his  life  causes  him — at  least 
among  the  Romanic  peoples — to  include  the 
mother  in  his  worship  of  the  Madonna.  And 
whenever  a  man  dreams  of  the  great  love,  he 
sees  a  vision  of  motherly  tenderness  fused  with 
the  fire  of  passion. 

In  Art,  that  great  undogmatised  church, 
man  has  not  wearied  of  interpreting  that 
dream,  of  glorifying  that  vision  in  word  and 
colour.  Even  the  woman-child,  with  motherly 
action  straining  the  doll  to  her  breast,  kindles 
his  emotion;  he  would  kneel  to  the  maiden 
who,  unseen,  displays  her  tender  solicitude  for 
a  child,  to  the  "Sister"  who  brightens  the 
sick-room,  to  the  old  nurse  in  whose  face 
every  wrinkle  has  been  formed  as  a  cranny  of 
goodness.  They  all  touch  his  emotion  in 
revealing  the  loveliest  of  his  possessions  in 


Motherliness  101 

mother  or  wife;  if  he  has  neither,  then  the 
things  which  he  most  yearns  to  have,  and  which 
he  most  warmly  desires  about  him  in  his  last 
hours.  Whether  the  individual  was  doomed 
to  yearn  in  vain  or  not,  that  motherliness 
existed  has  always  been  felt  to  be  as  certain 
as  that  the  sun  existed,  even  though  the  day 
be  overcast.  Humanity  could,  one  thought, 
count  on  the  warmth  of  motherliness,  as  for 
millions  of  years  we  may  still  rely  on  the 
warmth  of  the  sun. 


II 


During  those  earlier  periods,  motherliness 
was  but  a  mighty  nature-force;  beneficial, 
but  violent  as  well;  guiding,  but  also  blind. 
As  little  as  they  discussed  the  question  of 
the  natural  division  of  labour,  which  had 
arisen  because  the  woman  bore,  nurtured,  and 
reared  the  children,  and — in  literal  as  well  as 
in  spiritual  sense— kept  the  fire  on  the  hearth, 
even  less  did  they  doubt  the  natural  "mother 
instinct "  being  sufficient  for  the  human  family. 
The  instinct  sufficed  to  propagate  the  race, 
and  the  question  of  not  only  propagating,  but 
elevating,  had  not  yet  been  thought  upon. 


102  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

Even  such  as  it  has  been,  motherliness  has 
achieved  enormous  gains  for  progress.  Al- 
though not  yet  consciously  cultivated,  it  has 
been  the  greatest  cultural  power.  Through 
research  into  the  origin  of  humanity  and  into 
its  early  history,  it  became  clear  to  us  as 
previously  explained  that  motherliness  was 
the  first  germ  of  altruism,  and  that  the  sacri- 
fices for  their  progeny  which  the  higher  animals, 
and  even  the  lowest  races  of  mankind,  im- 
posed upon  themselves  were  the  first  expres- 
sions of  the  consciousness  of  kind,  out  of  which 
later  the  social  feeling  gradually  developed 
with  its  countless  currents  and  unmeasurable 
deeps. 

With  the  primitive  peoples,  who  lived  in  a 
state  of  war  of  all  against  all,  there  was  only 
one  spot  where  battle  did  not  rage,  where  the 
tender  feeling,  little  by  little,  grew.  Among 
the  older  people,  mutual  depredation  was  the 
established  order;  only  the  child  craved  help; 
and  in  helping  the  child,  father  and  mother 
united.  The  child  made  the  beginning  of  a 
higher  relation  between  the  parents.  In  the 
man,  the  fatherly  duty x of  protection  took  the 
form  of  war  and  hunting,  which  developed 
the  self-assertive,  " egoistical' '  qualities;  while 


Motherliness  103 

the  woman's  duties  developed  the  self-sacri- 
ficing, altruistic  feelings. 

Motherliness,  which  in  the  beginning  was 
but  the  animal  instinct  for  protecting  the 
young,  became  helpfulness,  compassion,  glad 
sympathy,  far-thinking  tenderness,  personal 
love — a  relation  in  which  the  feeling  of  duty 
had  come  to  possess  the  strength  of  instinct, 
one  in  which  it  was  never  asked  if,  but  only 
how,  the  duty  should  be  fulfilled.  And  though 
the  manner  of  showing  the  feeling  has  under- 
gone transition,  the  feeling  itself,  during  all 
the  ages  that  it  has  acted  in  human  life,  has 
developed  until,  in  our  day,  it  has  grown  far 
beyond  the  boundaries  of  home.  The  man's 
work  is  to  kindle  the  fire  on  the  hearth,  the 
woman's  is  to  maintain  it;  it  is  man's  to  defend 
the  lives  of  those  belonging  to  him;  woman's, 
to  care  for  them.  This  is  the  division  of  labour 
by  which  the  race  has  reached  its  present 
stage. 

Manliness  and  womanliness  became  syn- 
onymous with  the  different  kinds  of  exercise  of 
power  belonging  to  each  sex,  in  their  separate 
functions  of  father  and  mother.  That  the 
mother,  through  her  imagination  dwelling  on 
the  unborn  child,  through  her  bond  with  the 


104  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

living  child,  through  her  incessant  labors, 
joys,  and  hopes,  has  more  swiftly  and  strongly 
developed  her  motherliness  than  the  father 
his  fatherliness,  is  psychologically  self-evident. 
The  modern  psychologist  knows  that  it  is  not 
the  association  of  theory,  but  the  association 
of  feeling,  which  is  the  most  important  factor 
in  the  soul-life.  But  besides  feeling,  which 
belongs  to  the  unconscious  sphere,  and  which, 
like  the  roots  of  the  plant,  must  remain  in  the 
dark  soil  that  the  tree  may  live,  we  have  will 
to  guide  our  thoughts.  What  is  present  in  the 
soul,  what  directs  our  action,  what  spurs  our 
effort,  that  is  what  we,  with  all  our  will,  as 
well  as  feeling,  hold  dear.  Thus  there  accu- 
mulated in  the  female  sex  an  energy  of  mother- 
liness, which  has  shown  itself  so  mighty  and 
boundless  a  power  that  we  have  come  to  claim 
it  as  a  constant  element  and  one  not  subject 
to  change.  And  this  energy  grew  so  great 
because  the  hitherto  universally  conflicting 
elements  in  human  life  reached  their  oneness 
in  mother-love;  the  soul  and  the  senses,  al- 
truism and  egoism,  blended. 

In  every  strong  maternal  feeling  there  is 
also  a  strong  sensuous  feeling  of  pleasure, — 
which  an  unwise  mother  gives  vent  to  in  the 


Motherliness  105 

violent  caresses  with  which  she  fondles  the 
soft  body  of  her  baby — a  pleasure  which  thrills 
the  mother  with  blissful  emotion  when  she 
puts  the  child  to  her  breast ;  and  at  that  same 
moment  motherliness  attains  its  most  sublime 
spiritual  state,  sinks  into  the  depths  of  eter- 
nity, which  no  ecstatic  words — only  tears — 
can  express.  Self-sacrifice  and  self-realisation 
come  to  harmony  in  mother-love.  In  a  word, 
then,  the  nature  of  motherliness  is  altruism  N 
and  egoism  harmonised.  This  harmony  makes  \ 
motherhood  the  most  perfect  human  state;/ 
that  in  which  the  individual  happiness  is  a 
constant  giving,  and  constant  giving  is  the 
highest  happiness.  Bjornson's  words,  "a 
mother  suffers  from  the  moment  she  is  a 
mother/'  and  the  declaration  of  countless 
women  that  they  never  realised  the  meaning 
of  bliss  until  they  held  the  child  to  their  breast, 
are  fully  reconcilable  in  the  nature  of  mother- 
hood. 

What  torrents  of  life-force,  of  soul,  tender- 
ness, and  goodness  have  flowed  through 
humanity  from  the  motherliness  of  the  true 
mothers,  and  the  mothers  who  have  not  borne 
children.  All  the  bodily  pangs  and  labours 
which  motherhood  and  mother-care  have  cost 


io6  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

age  after  age,  is  the  least  of  their  giving.  All 
the  patient  toiling  which  millions  of  mothers 
have  imposed  upon  themselves  when  they 
alone  have  reared  and  fed  their  children,  all 
the  watchful '  nights,  all  the  tired  steps, — all 
that  mothers  have  denied  themselves  for  the 
sake  of  their  children,  is  not  the  greatest  of 
their  sufferings.  Their  greatest  sorrow  is 
that  expressed  in  the  poem,  written  by  a  man, 
wherein  the  mother  throws  her  heart  at  her 
son's  feet.  The  son,  as  he  angrily  stumbles 
over  it,  hears  it  whisper,  "Did  you  hurt  your- 
self, my  child  ?" 

During  the  thousands  of  years  that  mother- 
liness  was  of  this  sort,  women  had  not  yet 
been  seized  with  the  modern  and  legitimate 
desire,  sich  auszuleben,  to  drain  the  wine  of  life. 
The  one  desire  of  their  souls  was  sich  ein- 
zuleben  to  lose  themselves  in  the  lives  of 
their  dear  ones  in  their  own  world,  often 
narrow  indeed,  yet  for  them  a  world  grown 
great  and  rich  through  the  joy  of  motherhood  in 
creating.  The  mother  had  labour  and  trouble 
no  less  than  the  working-woman  of  to-day,  but 
then  she  was  in  the  home.  She  could  quiet 
the  crying  of  the  little  child,  take  part  for  a 
moment  in  its  play,  give  correction  or  help; 


Motherliness  107 

she  was  at  hand  to  receive  their  confidences 
when  the  children  came  in  with  their  joys  or 
griefs.  Thus  she  wove  of  little  silken  threads 
a  daily-stronger-growing  band  of  love,  which, 
throughout  all  the  changes  of  life,  and  wher- 
ever the  children  afterwards  went  into  the 
world,  held  their  hearts  close  to  her  own. 

And  when  a  mother,  later,  sat  alone  and 
yearned,  how  she  lived  in  and  through  her 
children ! 

Though  all  were  not  like  Goethe's  mother, — 
Goethe,  whom  we  could  have  loved  even 
more  if  he  had  oftener  visited  his  glorious 
mother, — yet  she  is  typical  of  the  many,  many 
mothers  in  whom  motherliness  has  been  so 
strong  that  it  has  lived  by  its  own  strength, 
so  great  that  it  has  developed  all  the  powers 
of  their  beings.  And  these  mothers  became 
complete  individualities  of  dignity  and  worth, 
although  their  life-interest  was  centred,  not  in 
a  work  of  their  own  but  in  the  child  to  whom 
they  had  given  the  best  of  themselves.  They 
were  mothers  of  whom  great  sons  have  testified 
that  from  them  had  they  got  their  own  essen- 
tial qualities.  Those  mothers  were  not  "char- 
acterless" beings,  upon  whom  the  women  of 
our  day,  bent  on  the  complete  expression  of 


io8  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

their  wonderful  lives,  look  down.  No,  they 
were  in  the  noblest  sense  liberated.  Their 
personalities  were  enriched  through  wisdom 
and  calm  power.  They  were  ripened  into  a 
sweetness  and  fulness  through  a  motherliness 
which  not  only  had  tended  the  body,  but 
which  had  been,  in  deepest  meaning,  a  spiritual 
motherhood. 

Besides  these  glorious  revealers  of  mother- 
liness, there  has  always  been  the  great  swarm 
of  anxious  bird-mothers,  who  could  do  no 
more  than  cover  their  young  with  their  wings; 
great  flocks  of  "  goose-mothers, "  mothers  who 
with  good  reason  were  called  unnatural,  just 
because  it  was  never  doubted  that  mother- 
liness was  the  natural  thing,  something  one 
had  a  right  to  expect — the  wealth  which  could 
have  no  end. 

in 

Scientific  investigation  into  the  form 
through  which,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
the  power  of  motherliness  was  expressed  in 
the  laws  and  customs  of  the  past,  and  fur- 
ther research  into  that  compound  of  feelings 
and  ideas  which  shaped  and  gave  rise  to  the 
traditions  of  savage  tribes,  came  simultane- 


Motherliness  109 

ously  with  the  era  of  Woman-Emancipation. 
At  the  same  time  there  took  place  a  deep 
transformation  in  the  view  of  life,  during 
which  all  values  were  estimated  anew,  even 
the  value  of  motherliness.  And  now  the 
women  themselves  borrow  their  argument 
from  science,  when  they  try  to  prove  that 
motherliness  is  only  an  attribute  woman  shares 
with  the  female  animal,  an  attribute  belonging 
to  lower  phases  of  development,  whereas  her 
full  humanity  embraces  all  the  attributes, 
independent  of  sex,  which  she  shares  with  man. 
Women  now  demand  that  woman,  as  man, 
first  of  all  be  judged  by  purely  human  qualities, 
and  declare  that  every  new  effort  to  make 
woman's  motherliness  a  determining  factor 
for  her  nature  or  her  calling,  is  a  return  to 
antiquated  superstition. 

When  the  Woman  Movement  began,  in  the 
middle  of  the  last  century,  and  many  expressed 
fears  that  "  womanliness "  would  suffer,  such 
contentions  were  answered  by  saying  that  that 
would  be  as  preposterous  as  that  the  warmth 
of  the  sun  would  give  out.  It  was  just  in 
order  that  the  motherliness  should  be  able  to 
penetrate  all  the  spheres  of  life  that  woman's 
liberation  was  required. 


no  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

And  now?  Now  we  see  a  condition  of  things 
alluded  to  in  the  first  chapter,  a  constantly 
decreasing  birth-rate  on  account  of  an  in- 
creasing disinclination  for  motherhood,  and 
this  not  alone'  among  the  child-worn  drudges 
in  home  and  industry,  not  alone  among  the 
lazy  creatures  of  luxury.  No,  even  women 
strong  of  body  and  worthy  of  motherhood 
choose  either  celibacy,  or  at  most  one  child, 
often  none.  And  not  a  few  women  are  to 
be  found  eager  advocates  of  children's  up- 
bringing from  infancy  outside  of  the  home. 
Motherhood  has,  in  other  words,  for  many 
women  ceased  to  be  the  sweet  secret  dream 
of  the  maiden,  the  glad  hope  of  the  wife,  the 
deep  regret  of  the  ageing  woman  who  has 
not  had  this  yearning  satisfied.  Motherli- 
ness  has  diminished  to  such  a  degree  that 
women  use  their  intelligence  in  trying  to  prove 
not  only  that  day-nurseries,  kindergartens, 
and  schools  are  necessary  helps  in  case  of  need, 
but  that  they  are  better  than  the  too  devoted 
and  confining  motherliness  of  the  home,  where 
the  child  is  "developed  into  a  family-egoist, 
not  into  a  social  modern  human  being! " 


Motherliness  in 

IV 

Some  years  ago,  I  wandered  through  the 
Engadine,  the  place  where  the  two  men 
who,  for  our  day,  have  strongly  emphasised 
the  importance  of  motherliness  found  inspira- 
tion— Nietzsche,  summer  after  summer,  and 
Segantini,  year  after  year.  Segantini  has 
often  painted,  not  only  the  human  mother, 
but  also  the  animal  mother.  And  he  has 
done  both  with  the  simple  greatness  and 
tenderness  of  the  old  masters  who,  in  the 
Madonna  and  the  Child,  glorified  the  wonder- 
ful mystery  of  mother-love.  Segantini,  who 
lived  and  died  in  the  Alpine  world  where  life 
is  maintained  under  great  difficulties,  noted 
principally  the  importance  of  the  mother- 
warmth  during  the  mere  physical  struggle  for 
existence.  Nietzsche  again,  the  lonely  writer 
and  seer  of  humanity's  future,  emphasised 
not  only  the  significance  of  motherliness  in  a 
physical  sense,  but  also  in  a  sense  hitherto 
barely  perceived,  of  consciously  re-creating  the 
race.  He  knew  that  the  instinct  first  of  all 
must  be  developed  in  the  direction  of  sexual 
selection,  so  as  to  promote  the  growth  of 
superior  inborn  traits.  He  knew  also  that 


ii2  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

women  needed  to  be  educated  to  a  perfected 
motherliness,  that  they,  instead  of  bungling 
this  work  as  they  are  apt  to  do  to-day,  may 
come  to  practise  the  profession  of  motherhood 
as  a  great  anil  difficult  art. 

This  new  conception  is  ignored  by  those  who 
advocate  community-upbringing  instead  of 
home-rearing,  because  most  mothers,  among 
other  reasons,  are  to-day  incapable  as  educa- 
tors, and  because  parents  to-day  often  make 
homes  into  hells  for  children.  What  hells 
institutions  can  be,  seems  to  be  forgotten! 
Almost  every  child  is  happier  in  an  ordinary, 
average  home  than  in  an  admirable  institution, 
because  every  child  needs — has  needed,  and 
will  continue  to  need — a  mother's  care;  but 
we  must  see  to  it  that  this  care  will  become 
increasingly  efficient.  And  what  a  strange 
superstition,  that  the  teachers  of  the  future  will 
all  be  excellent,  but — that  the  parents  will 
remain  incorrigible. 

As  yet  have  we  even  tried  to  educate 
women  and  men  to  be  mothers  and  fathers? 
This,  the  most  important  of  all  social  duties, 
we  are  still  allowed  to  discharge  without  pre- 
paration and  almost  without  responsibility. 
When  the  words  of  Nietzsche,  "A  time  will 


Motherliness  113 

come  when  men  will  think  of  nothing  except 
education/'  have  become  a  reality,  then  we 
shall  understand  that  no  cost  is  too  great  when 
it  comes  to  preserving  real  homes  for  the 
purpose  of  this  new  education.  And  there  is 
nothing  which  in  a  higher  degree  utilises  all 
the  powers  of  womanhood  (not  alone  those  of 
motherliness)  than  the  exercise  of  them  in  the 
true,  not  yet  tried,  education  of  the  new 
generation. 

All  women,  even  as  now  all  men,  must  learn 
a  trade  whereby  they  can  earn  their  livelihood, 
— in  case  they  do  not  become  mothers,  as  well 
as  before  they  so  become,  and  after  the  years 
of  their  children's  minority;  but  during  those 
years  they  must  give  themselves  wholly  to  the 
vocation  of  motherhood.  But  for  most  wo- 
men it  ought  still  to  be  the  dream  of  happiness, 
some  time  in  their  lives,  to  have  fulfilled  the 
mission  of  motherhood,  and  during  that  time 
to  have  been  freed  from  outside  work  in  which 
they  only  in  exceptional  cases  would  be  likely 
to  find  the  same  full  outlet  for  their  creative 
desire,  for  feeling,  thought,  imagination,  as 
is  to  be  found  in  the  educative  activity  in  the 
home.  But  so  unmotherly  are  many  wo- 
men of  this  age,  that  this  view  is  considered 

8 


ii4  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

old-fashioned  and  (with  the  usual  confusion 
of  definitions)  consequently  impossible  for  the 
future. 

When  already  they  say  the  women  of  to-day 
want  to  be  "freed"  from  the  inferior  duties  of 
mother  and  ^housewife,  in  order  to  devote 
themselves  to  higher  callings,  as  self-support- 
ing and  independent  members  of  society,  how 
much  more  will  that  be  the  case  with  the 
women  of  the  future!  As  these  "higher 
callings, "  however,  for  the  majority  consist, 
and  will  continue  to  consist,  in  monotonous 
labour  in  factory,  store,  office,  and  such  occu- 
pations, it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  these 
tasks  can  possibly  bring  greater  freedom  and 
happiness  than  the  broad  usefulness  in  a 
home,  where  woman  is  sovereign — yea,  under 
the  inspiration  of  motherhood,  creator — in  her 
sphere,  and  where  she  is  directly  working  for 
her  own  dear  ones.  Neither  can  it  be  under- 
stood how  the  care  of  one's  own  children  can 
be  felt  as  a  more  wearisome  and  inferior  task 
than,  for  instance,  the  laborious  work  of  a 
sick-nurse,  or  school  teacher,  who,  year  in  and 
year  out,  works  for  persons  with  whom  only 
in  exceptional  cases  she  comes  in  heart-con- 
tact. 


Motherliness  115 

If  women  meanwhile  continue  to  look  upon 
the  work  of  mothers  and  house-mothers  as 
in  itself  burdensome  and  lowering,  then, 
naturally,  the  care  of  children  and  of  the 
home  will  gradually  be  taken  over  by  groups 
of  women  who,  on  account  of  their  mother- 
liness,  choose  to  occupy  themselves  with 
children  and  household  duties. 

If  this  "freedom"  is  the  ideal  of  the  future, 
then,  indeed,  my  view  of  motherliness,  as 
indispensable  for  humanity,  is  reactionary; 
but  it  is  reactionary  in  the  same  way  that 
medicine  reacts  against  disease.  And  has  our 
race  ever  been  afflicted  by  a  more  dangerous 
disease  than  the  one  which  at  present  rages 
among  women :  the  sick  yearning  to  be  "  freed ' ' 
from  the  most  essential  attribute  of  their  sex? 
In  motherliness,  the  most  indispensable  human 
qualities  have  their  root. 

Women  who  summon  all  their  intelligence 
and  keenness  in  their  endeavour  to  prove  that 
motherliness  is  not  the  quinta  essentia  of 
womanhood  verily  need  a  Minerva  Medica, 
as  portrayed  in  the  Vatican  relief,  the  goddess 
of  wisdom  with  the  symbol  of  the  art  of  heal- 
ing! And  she  will  surely  come  when  the 
time  most  needs  her. 


n6  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

The  phrase,  "the  course  of  progress  tends 
to  the  dissolution  of  the  home,"  shows  how 
little  we  understand  the  words  we  use.  Pro- 
gress implies  also  dissolution,  decay,  retro- 
gression, and  death.  In  the  progress  of  a 
disease  attacking  culture,  a  new  renaissance 
must  come,  if  not  for  the  people,  then  for  the 
truths,  which  though  temporarily  dimmed  will 
be  seen  in  a  new  light  by  new  peoples.  From 
time  to  time  has  this  been  the  case  with  the 
emotions  of  patriotism,  of  religion,  and  of 
liberty.  No  fundamental  values,  indispens- 
able to  humanity,  are  lost;  they  return  rein- 
forced. Motherliness  has  not  been  lost  even 
in  those  who  show  a  lack  of  it  in  their  personal 
lives.  They  have  converted  it  into  general 
service.  When  women  at  last  have  become 
fully  emancipated,  then  the  enormous  sums 
of  energy  which  now  are  invested  in  agitation 
will  be  set  free:  to  be  used  partly  for  social 
transformation,  partly  to  flow  back  with 
fresher  and  fuller  power  into  the  home. 

Very  likely  there  will  always  be  a  number 
of  unmotherly,  of  sexless,  but  useful  working 
ants.  Women  geniuses,  with  their  inevitably 
exceptional  position,  may  increase.  Possibly 
also  the  type  of  hetaira  frequent  in  our  day — 


Motherliness  117 

women  who  devote  themselves  to  a  career 
which  makes  them  independent  of  marriage. 
They  wish  to  be  lovers,  but  lovers  who  cap- 
tivate not  alone  by  beauty,  but  also  by  in- 
tellectual sympathy.  That  these  women  do 
not  want  the  care  of  children,  when  they  do 
not  even  want  motherhood,  is  but  natural. 

In  that  future  of  which  I  dream,  there  shall 
be  neither  men  who  are  ill-paid  and  harassed 
family  supporters,  nor  wives  who  are  unre- 
warded and  worn-out  family  slaves.  Then 
all  home  arrangements  shall  be  as  perfectly 
adjusted  as  they  are  now  the  reverse,  and  all 
home  duties  be  transformed  by  new  ways  of 
work,  which  shall  be  lighter,  cheaper,  quicker. 
Thus,  woman  will  actually  be  "freed"  in  re- 
spect to  those  burdens  of  the  home-life  from 
which  she  ought  to  and  may  be  freed,  freed 
so  as  to  be  spared  the  necessity  of  giving  over 
the  care  of  her  children  to  nurseries  and  kinder- 
gartens, where  even  the  most  excellent  teacher 
becomes  mediocre  when  her  motherliness  must 
embrace  dozens  of  tender  souls. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  "progress"  takes  the 
road  leading  toward  the  breaking  up  of  the 
home, — the  ideal  of  the  future  for  the  maternal, 
— then  the  future  state  will  be  a  state  of  herd- 


n8  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

people.  But  the  more  our  laws,  our  habits 
of  work,  and  our  feelings  become  socialised, 
the  more  ought  education  itself  in  home  and 
school  to  become  individualised,  to  counteract 
the  danger  of  getting  fewer  personalities 
while  institutions  increase.  And  individual 
upbringing  can  be  carried  on  only  in  homes 
where  mothers  have  preserved  the  nature- 
power  of  motherliness  and  given  this  power  a 
conscious  culture. 


The  supposition  that  motherliness  has  its 
surest  guide  in  its  instinct  is  therefore  a  su- 
perstition which  must  be  conquered.  In  order 
to  be  developed,  motherliness  must  exist 
in  one's  nature.  The  matter  must  be  there 
so  as  to  be  shaped;  this  is  obvious.  But  the 
feeling  in  itself  may,  like  all  other  natural 
forces,  work  for  good  or  for  evil;  the  feeling 
itself  often  shows,  even  in  motherliness,  the 
need  of  the  evolution  in  humanity  which  the 
poet  foreshadows,  when  we  at  last  shall  see 
"the  ape  and  tiger  die. " 

As  motherliness  has  been  sung  more  than 
it  has  been  understood,  we  have  lived  in  the 


Motherliness  119 

illusion  not  only  that  it  was  inexhaustible, 
but  that  its  instinct  was  infallible, — that  for 
this  sacred  feeling  nature  had  done  every- 
thing and  no  culture  was  needed.  Hence 
motherliness  has  remained  until  this  day 
uneducated.  The  truth  that  no  one  can  be 
educated  to  motherliness — any  more  than  a 
moon  can  be  made  into  a  sun — has  been  con- 
founded with  the  delusion  that  the  mother- 
instinct  is  all-sufficient  in  itself.  Hence 
it  has  often  remained  blind,  crude,  violent; 
and  "  instinct "  has  not  hindered  mothers  from 
murdering  their  children  by  ignorance,  and 
from  robbing  them  of  their  most  precious 
mental  and  physical  possessions. 

This  sentimental  view  of  motherliness  as 
the  ever  holy,  ever  infallible  power,  must  be 
abandoned;  and  even  this  province  of  nature 
brought  under  the  sway  of  culture.  Mother- 
liness is  as  yet  but  a  glorious  stuff  awaiting 
its  shaping  artist.  Child-bearing,  rearing, 
and  training  must  become  such  that  they 
correspond  to  Nietzsche's  vision  of  a  race 
which  would  not  be  fortgepflanzt  only,  but 
hinaufgepflanzt. 

Motherliness  must  be  cultivated  by  the 
acquisition  of  the  principles  of  heredity,  of 


120  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

race-hygiene,  child-hygiene,  child-psychology. 
Motherliness  must  revolt  against  giving  the 
race  too  few,  too  many,  or  degenerate  children. 
Motherliness  ,must  exact  all  the  legal  rights 
without  which  woman  cannot,  in  the  fullest 
sense  of  the  word,  be  either  child-mother  or 
social-mother.  Motherliness  thus  developed 
will  rescue  mothers  not  only  from  olden -time 
superstition,  but  also  from  present-day  excite- 
ment. It  will  teach  them  to  create  the  peace 
and  beauty  in  the  home  which  are  requisite 
for  the  happy  unfolding  of  childhood,  and 
this  without  closing  the  doors  of  the  home  on 
the  thoughts  and  demands  of  modern  times. 
Motherliness  will  teach  the  mother  how  to 
remain  at  the  same  time  Madonna,  the  mother 
with  her  own  child  close  in  her  arms,  and  Cari- 
tas,  as  pictured  in  art:  the  mother  who  at  her 
full  breast  has  room  also  for  the  lips  of  the 
orphaned  child. 

Many  are  the  women  in  our  day  who  no 
longer  believe  that  God  became  man.  More 
and  more  are  coming  to  embrace  the  deeper 
religious  thought,  the  thought  that  has  given 
wings  to  man  created  of  dust,  the  thought  that 
men  shall  one  day  become  gods!  But  not 


Motherliness  121 

through  new  social  systems,  not  through  new 
conquests  of  nature,  not  through  new  institu- 
tions of  learning.  The  only  way  to  reach  this 
state  is  to  become  ever  more  human,  through 
an  increasingly  wise  and  beautiful  love  of 
ourselves  and  our  neighbours,  and  by  a  more 
and  more  perfect  care  of  the  budding  person- 
alities. Therefore,  if  we  stop  to  think,  it  is 
criminal  folly  to  put  up  as  the  ideal  of  woman's 
activity,  the  superficial,  instead  of  the  more 
tender  and  intimate  tasks  of  society.  How 
can  we  hope  for  power  of  growth  when  the 
source  of  warmth  has  been  shut  off? 

The  fact  that  the  thought  of  our  age  is 
shallow  in  regard  to  this  its  most  profound 
question — the  importance  of  motherliness  for 
the  race — does,  however,  by  no  means  prove 
that  the  future  will  be  just  as  superficial. 
The  future  will  probably  smile  at  the  whole 
woman-question  as  one  smiles  at  a  question  on 
which  one  has  long  since  received  a  clear  and 
radiant  answer!  This  answer  will  be  the 
truly  free  woman  of  the  future,  she  who  will 
have  attained  so  fully  developed  a  human- 
ity that  she  cannot  even  dream  of  a  desire  to 
be  ' 'liberated "  from  the  foremost  essential 
quality  of  ht^  womanhood — motherliness. 


Ill 

Education   for  Motherhood 


123 


"A  time  will  come  when  men  will  think  of  nothing 
except  education." 

NIETZSCHE. 

THE  optimism  with  reference  to  the 
mothers  of  the  future  which  I  have  ex- 
pressed in  the  foregoing  is  based  on  my  habit 
of  counting  by  epochs  in  judging  the  probable 
future  of  humanity.  The  optimist  is  often 
right.  But  only  if  he  can  wait — some  hund- 
red years! 

The  modern  woman's  view  of  motherhood, 
as  I  have  endeavoured  to  show  in  the  first 
essay,  is  not  calculated  to  nourish  optimism. 
This  view  is  the  natural  result  of  the  spirit  of 
the  age  which  is  determined  fundamentally 
by  the  two  great  vital  forces,  physical  and 
spiritual,  which,  since  the  morning  of  the  race, 
have  had  decisive  influence  on  its  destinies, — 
economics  and  religion.  During  the  last 
century,  economic  conditions  have  been  re- 

125 


126  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

garded  as  of  greater  importance,  and  religion 
of  less.  The  souls  of  nations,  as  well  as  the 
individual  soul,  have  been  earth-bound  in 
the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  Investigations 
of  earth  and  nature  and  the  utilisation  of  all 
resources  have  occupied  a  race  which  has  made 
the  spirit  of  Aladdin's  lamp  a  slave  of  utility; 
which,  with  greedy  heart,  has  gained  the  whole 
world,  but  in  the  meantime  has  heedlessly 
forfeited  its  own  soul. 

Science  and  desire  for  gain  have  marvellously 
broadened  the  sphere  of  man's  power  over 
an  external  world.  Simultaneously  with  this 
the  emancipation  of  woman  has  proceeded. 
The  world  invaded  by  woman,  both  needing 
and  demanding  work,  has  not  been  a  world 
in  which  holy  voices  have  spoken  of  high  things. 
It  has  been  a  world  in  which  strong  and  hot 
hands  have  grasped  what  to  their  age  seemed 
the  kingdom  of  heaven :  material  wealth  which 
gave  its  possessors  the  power,  the  honour,  and 
the  glory.  Gain  has  been  God,  and  man  this 
God's  prophet.  Work  has  been  divine  wor- 
ship, especially  such  work  as  produced  riches. 
The  possibilities  of  satisfying  steadily  increas- 
ing cravings  for  pleasure,  and  of  living  an 
ever  more  care-free  and  secure  life,  have 


Education  for  Motherhood        127 

multiplied.    And  women  did  not  stem  the 
tide;  they  followed  it. 

In  logical  conjunction  with  the  raising  of  util- 
ity as  the  highest  of  life-values,  a  highly  gifted 
American  woman  has  offered  her  programme 
for  the  solution  of  the  conflicts  between 
woman's  labour  and  motherhood,  namely,  the 
rearing  and  educating  of  children  outside  the 
home.  Successive  institutions  are  suggested 
for  the  bottle-period,  kindergarten,  and  school- 
age,  and  so  on.  Thus,  she  contends,  will  the 
parents,  who  are  usually  poor  educators, 
be  supplanted  by  trained  and  "born"  educa- 
tors; the  children  would  stand  in  visiting 
relations  to  the  individual  home  with  its  too 
warm  and  emasculating  tenderness,  while  in 
the  institutions  they  would  get  the  bracing 
air  and  the  training  for  social  life  demanded  in 
this  age,  instead  of  the  egotistical  attitude 
of  family  life.  The  social  activities  of  the 
mothers  of  the  well-to-do  classes  and  the 
outside  work  of  the  wage-earning  mothers 
make  mother-care  only  a  figure  of  speech,  and 
the  children  are  neglected.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  by  this  plan  of  reform,  the  bodies 
as  well  as  the  souls  of  the  children  would  be 
well  cared  for  by  specialists.  The  mothers 


128  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

could  calmly  devote  themselves  to  their  gain- 
ful work  and  their  social  duties.  The  child's 
need  of  the  mother  and  the  mother's  need  of 
the  child  is 'a  prejudice  which  must  vanish 
with  all  other  superstitions  from  lower  stages 
of  culture,  if  the  mothers  are  to  be  coequal 
with  men,  community  members,  capable  of 
work,  and  if  the  children  are  to  be  well  reared 
for  the  social  vocations  which  must  soon 
determine  the  trend  of  all  lives. 

This  view  of  Charlotte  Stetson  (now  Mrs. 
Oilman)  coincides  somewhat  with  that  of  the 
great  African  author,  Olive  Schreiner.  Both 
these  writers  emphasise  rightly  the  fact  that 
since  woman's  home  work  no  longer  has  the 
same  productive  value  that  it  had  in  an  age 
when  she  was  the  one  to  prepare  the  raw 
materials  and  to  produce  all  the  necessities 
for  the  household,  the  women  of  the  leisure 
class,  under  the  shibboleth  "the  care  of  the 
home, "  have  become  the  largest  class  of  social 
parasites  of  contemporary  times,  who  pay 
with  their  body  for  the  freedom  from  work 
that  the  men  gain  for  them.  Women  have 
become  "over-sexed"  because  to  enhance 
their  sexual  attraction  has  been  the  surest 
means  of  obtaining  an  idle  life  through 


Education  for  Motherhood        129 

matrimony.  Until  this  and  similar  econo- 
mic interests  vanish  from  marriage,  love 
cannot  be  pure  nor  can  the  position  of  the 
wife  be  one  of  true  human  dignity.  Long 
ago,  in  the  eighteen-thirties,  these  truths 
were  expressed  by  the  great  Swedish  writer, 
C.  J.  L.  Almqvist.1 

If  the  Spartan  plan  above  mentioned  were 
really  a  solution  of  the  problem,  there  would 
be  no  occasion  for  further  talk  about  general 
education  for  motherhood.  In  that  case,  all 
young  girls  could  go  straight  on  toward  pro- 
fessional training  with  a  remunerative  vocation 
as  their  goal.  And  this  would  be  not  only  a 
personal,  but  a  national  economic  gain.  For 
the  personal  energies  and  the  money  spent  in 
acquiring  a  profession  would  not  be  wasted, 
as  is  now  so  often  the  case,  if  motherhood  were 

1  C.  J.  L.  Almqvist  fled  from  Sweden  in  1851  and  went  to 
New  York  in  the  fall  of  the  same  year,  there  calling  himself 
Professor  Gustavi.  He  supported  himself  by  teaching  languages 
and  acting  as  reporter  on  newspapers;  he  travelled  extensively, 
visiting  Upper  Canada,  Niagara,  St.  Louis;  lived  in  Belleville, 
in  Chicago,  and  Philadelphia,  and  was  in  St.  Louis  at  the  time  of 
the  Civil  War.  Enthusiastic  Unionist  and  admirer  of  Lincoln, 
he  hastened  to  Tejas  in  Mexico,  lost  some  manuscripts  in  Tejas, 
and  with  difficulty  reached  Washington,  where  he  met  Lincoln. 
He  returned  to  Europe  in  1865.  In  case  any  one  in  America 
should  happen  to  remember  anything  about  him,  communication 
thereof  would  be  most  gratefully  received. — THE  AUTHOR. 

9 


130  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

but  a  short  interruption  in  a  woman's  pro- 
fessional work. 

This  programme,  outlined  but  briefly  since 
it  is  well  tnown  in  the  United  States  as  in 
Europe,  has  the  enormous  advantage  of 
making  clear  the  dilemma  before  which 
many  women  who  work  for  their  livelihood 
play  ostrich,  namely,  that  a  woman  cannot 
be  a  competent  outside  worker,  working  from 
eight  to  ten  or  more  hours  a  day,  and  at 
the  same  time  a  housewife  and  mother 
who  performs  well  the  duties  these  voca- 
tions demand.  That  which  many  women 
with  exceedingly  small  claims  upon  them  still 
insist  on — that  they  are  well  able  to  manage 
outside  work,  housekeeping,  and  the  rearing 
of  children  simultaneously — is  just  what  the 
reform-programme  refutes,  making  it  plain 
that  the  present  attempts  at  compromise  have 
resulted  in  a  lessening  of  value  together  with  an 
enormous  overstrain. 

I,  too,  am  convinced  that  the  present  state 
of  affairs  is  untenable  from  the  economic, 
hygienic,  ethic,  and  aesthetic  point  of  view. 
A  radical  transformation  is  needed.  But  I 
hope  that  this  will  go  in  an  opposite  direction 
from  the  one  indicated  above. 


Education  for  Motherhood 

The  programme  for  the  abolition  of  home- 
training  rests  on  three  unproved  and  un- 
demonstrable  assumptions:  first,  that  women's 
mental  and  spiritual  work  in  the  home — the 
creating  of  the  home  atmosphere,  the  manage- 
ment of  the  housekeeping  and  the  upbringing 
of  children — is  of  no  " productive"  value; 
secondly,  that  parents  are  incapable  of  acquir- 
ing proficiency  as  educators  unless  they  are 
"born"  educators;  thirdly,  that  nature  amply 
provides  such  "born"  educators,  so  that  the 
many  thousands  of  institutions — with  a  pro- 
fessional mother  for  about  every  twenty  chil- 
dren— could  be  supplied  with  them  in  sufficient 
quantity  and  of  excellent  quality. 

These  assumptions  emanate  from  a  com- 
parison between  the  present  untrained  mothers 
and  trained  educators,  and  between  all  the 
dark  sides  of  the  home  and  the  light  sides  of 
collective  upbringing.  But  on  so  warped  a 
comparison  we  certainly  cannot  base  a  de- 
mand for  the  discontinuance  of  the  upbringing 
in  the  home. 

II 

The  past  gives  us  proof  enough  that 
woman's  creation,  the  home,  has  been  her 


132  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

great  cultural  contribution  to  civilisation. 
And  even  the  present  main  trend  of  the  desires 
and  feelings  of  the  race  shows  that  the  home 
has  not  lost  its  value.  But  nothing  is  more 
certain  than  that  there  has  awakened  a  need 
within  the  people  for  a  renaissance  of  the 
home.  In.  my  opinion,  such  a  ^renaissance 
can  come  only  through  a  new  marriage,  where 
the  perfect  equality  and  liberty  of  both 
husband  and  wife  are  established;  through 
a  strict  responsibility  towards  society  in  regard 
to  parentage  outside  as  well  as  within  marriage ; 
through  education  for  motherhood ;  and,  lastly, 
through  rendering  motherhood  economically 
secure,  recognising  it  as  a  public  work  to  be 
rewarded  and  controlled  by  society. 

Thus  the  problem  seems  to  me  more  com- 
plex, involving  greater  expense,  and  therefore 
more  difficult  of  solution. 

And  yet,  it  must  be  solved.  The  socially 
pernicious,  racially  wasteful,  and  soul-wither- 
ing consequences  of  the  working  of  moth- 
ers outside  the  home  must  cease.  And  this 
can  only  come  to  pass,  either  through  the 
programme  of  institutional  upbringing,  or 
through  the  intimated  renaissance  of  the 
home.  The  self-supporting  women  of  the 


Education  for  Motherhood        133 

present  day  do  not  want  again  to  become 
dependent  solely  upon  tjie  husbands'  main- 
tenance in  order  to  be  able  to  fulfil  the  duties 
of  a  mother  in  the  home.  And  thus  there  re- 
mains only  institutional  upbringing  or  moth- 
erhood regarded  as  a  social  work. 

During  the  child's  first  seven  years,  years 
that  determine  its  whole  life,  its  educator 
cannot  well  fulfil  her  mission  without  having 
a  daily  opportunity  to  observe  the  child's 
nature,  in  order  by  consistent  action  to  influ- 
ence it,  encouraging  certain  tendencies  and 
restraining  others.  This  alone  precludes  the 
mother's  working  outside  the  home.  To  an 
even  greater  degree  must  her  work  outside 
the  home  be  rejected  in  favour  of  that  most 
essential  education, — the  indirect, — which  ra- 
diates from  the  mother's  own  personality, 
from  the  spirit  she  creates  in  the  home.  Like 
the  direct  education,  the  indirect  cannot  be 
accomplished  in  stray  moments  snatched  from 
professional  work.  A  home  atmosphere  is  not 
a  condition  which  stays  permanent  of  itself, 
one  of  those  works  erf  art  which  once  created 
remain  unchanged.  The  creating  of  a  home  is, 
on  th^  contrary,  a  kind  of  art  which  has  this 
in  common  with  all  art  of  life — that  it  de- 


134  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

mands  the  artist's  continuous  presence  in 
body  and  soul.  A  home  life  where  the  mother's 
unceasing  C9ntribution  of  self  is  lacking  is  like 
a  drama  on  a  film. 

Wherever  the  great  and  beautiful  work  of 
art,  a  home,  has  come  into  being,  the  wife  and 
mother  has  had  her  paramount  existence  in 
that  home  though  her  interests  and  activities 
have  not  necessarily  been  limited  to  its  sphere. 
But  husband  and  children  have  been  able  to 
count  on  her  in  the  home  as  they  could  count 
on  the  fire  on  the  hearth,  the  cool  shade  under 
the  tree,  the  water  in  the  well,  the  bread  in 
the  sacrament.  Thus  upon  husband  and 
children  is  bestowed  the  experience  which  a 
great  poet  gained  from  his  mother.  "All 
became  to  her  a  wreath !"  A  wreath  where 
every  day's  toil  and  holiday's  joy,  hours  of 
labour  and  moments  of  rest,  were  leaf  and 
blossom  and  ribbon. 

The  wise  educator  is  never  one  who  is 
"educating"  from  morning  to  night.  She  is 
one  who,  unconsciously  to  the  children,  brings 
to  them  the  chief  sustenance  and  creates  the 
supreme  conditions  for  their  growth.  Pri- 
marily she  is  the  one  who,  through  the  seren- 
ity and  wisdom  of  her  own  nature,  is  dew  and 


Education  for  Motherhood         135 

sunshine  to  growing  souls.  She  is  one  who 
understands  how  to  demand  in  just  measure, 
and  to  give  at  the  right  moment.  She  is  one 
whose  desire  is  law,  whose  smile  is  reward, 
whose  disapproval  is  punishment,  whose  caress 
is  benediction. 

Sometimes  fathers,  too,  are  endowed  with 
this  genius  for  education.  And  it  would  not 
be  the  least  of  the  consequences  of  outside 
upbringing  if  the  children  were  to  lose  not 
only  the  daily  influence  of  the  mothers  but 
also  that  of  the  fathers.  Because  the  fathers 
are  the  breadwinners,  and  also  because  of  their 
lack  of  training  for  fatherhood,  this  influence 
is  as  a  rule  insignificant.  But  it  is  very 
important  that  this  state  of  affairs  be  changed. 
According  to  the  testimony  of  an  American 
author,1  the  increasing  predominance  of  wo- 
men teachers  in  America  is  already  cause  for 
anxiety,  and  with  good  reason,  for  the  good 
order  of  things  in  school,  in  the  home,  in  the 
community,  demands  that  men  and  women 
co-operate  as  equals,  having  like  authority 
and  like  responsibility.  But  since  a  division  of 
labour  on  the  whole  is  unavoidable,  this  di- 
vision must  be  determined  by  the  experience 

1  Earl  Barnes,  in  Woman  in  Modern  Society. — THE  AUTHOR. 


136  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

that  in  the  labour  market,  in  the  majority  of 
cases,  men  are  just  as  able  as  women,  and 
often  better  able,  to  perform  the  work  women 
perform. 

In  the  home,  on  the  other  hand,  men  can- 
not supplant  the  spirit  and  activities  of 
women.  Neither  can  the  contribution  of  the 
wives  and  mothers  to  the  homes  be  replaced 
by  that  of  professional  women  within  or  out- 
side the  homes.  Can  the  heart  in  an  organism 
be  replaced  by  a  pumping  engine,  however 
ingenious?  Any  reform  programme  which 
does  not  consider  these  realities  falls  under  the 
wise  judgment  of  the  shrewd  Catherine  II.: 
"Reforms  are  easily  accomplished  on  the 
patient  paper.  But  in  reality  they  are  writ- 
ten on  the  human  flesh,  which  is  sensitive. " 
Especially  is  this  true  of  the  child  who,  more- 
over, must  submit  to  the  influence  of  his 
educators,  unable  to  choose  or  evade  them. 
The  author  of  the  programme  means  that  the 
mothers  who  are  gifted  as  educators  should 
bring  up  about  twenty  other  children,  together 
with  their  own.  But  each  young  soul  needs 
to  be  enveloped  in  its  own  mother's  tenderness, 
just  as  surely  as  the  human  embryo  needed  the 
mother's  womb  to  grow  in  and  the  baby  the 


Education  for  Motherhood        137 

mother's  breast  to  be  nourished  by.  Accord- 
ing to  the  programme  referred  to,  each  child 
would  be  allotted  a  twentieth  part  of  mother- 
liness;  the  mother's  own  children  would  re- 
ceive no  more  than  the  others. 

Of  the  real  outcome  of  this  plan  a  prominent 
American  woman  gave  me  a  touching  illus- 
tration. As  sole  support  of  her  son,  she  had 
been  compelled  to  send  him  to  a  boarding- 
school  where  many  little  motherless  boys  were 
brought  up.  When  she  went  to  visit  her  boy, 
the  other  boys  fought  with  him  for  a  place  on 
her  lap,  so  hungry  were  they  for  a  moment's 
sensation  of  motherly  affection! 

That  many  children  are  unhappy  in  their 
homes  does  not  prove  that  the  same  children 
would  be  happier  in  an  institution;  only  of 
such  children  as  were  transferred  from  bad 
homes  to  good  institutions  could  this  be 
hoped.  That  many  a  careful  home  education 
has  failed  does  not  prove  that  the  children 
brought  up  in  a  particular  home  would  have 
turned  out  better  in  an  institution.  The 
very  best  institution  cannot  show  the  consid- 
eration for  a  child's  individuality,  or  furnish 
the  peace  and  freedom  for  the  development  of 
a  talent,  that  an  average  middle-class  home 


138  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

can. T  The  more  individual  a  child  is,  the  more 
it  suffers  by  the  uniformity  and  the  levelling 
forces  which  t  are  imposed  upon  it  already  by 
the  day  school.  And  how  much  more  must 
this  be  the  case  in  a  boarding  school ! 

On  the  other  hand,  we  have  the  manifold 
testimonies  given  by  great  personalities  of 
the  boundless  influence  of  a  mother 's,  of  a 
father's,  understanding  affection,  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  child's  individuality.  In  the 
children's  resemblance  to  the  parents,  the 
latter  have  a  guide  to  the  understanding  of 
the  children's  inherent  qualities,  which  the 
teachers  lack.  And  if,  on  the  one  hand,  these 
resemblances  contain  the  seeds  of  conflict,  on 
the  other,  they  furnish  various  possibilities 
of  influence. 

1  The  excellent  French  writer,  Rosny  (aine),  in  Le  Fardeau  de  la 
Vie  touchingly  describes  the  sufferings  a  child  experiences  in 
always  having  witnesses  to  everything:  his  rest  and  his  play, 
his  tears  and  his  joys;  of  never  having  a  corner  to  himself;  of 
ever  being  surrounded  by  cries,  laughter,  noise,  and  jokes;  of 
never  having  an  hour's  perfect  peace  or  liberty;  of  always  feeling 
every  emotion  of  the  soul  and  every  action  observed,  every 
occupation  subjected  to  interruption. 

The  children  of  the  poor  experience  similar  sufferings  in  their 
homes,  a  condition  which  can  be  remedied  only  by  better  housing 
conditions.  Similarly,  it  would  only  be  institutions  furnishing 
a  separate  room  for  each  child  which,  in  some  degree,  might 
alleviate  the  torture  described  by  the  French  writer. — THE 
AUTHOR. 


Education  for  Motherhood        139 

As  against  all  the  cases  where  the  tyranny 
of  the  parents — now  increasingly  rare — has 
forced  the  children  into  an  erroneous  walk  of 
life,  may  be  put  those  where  the  parents  have 
discovered  their  children's  talents  and  have 
encouraged  them  in  the  right  direction.  Some- 
times a  good  teacher  has  done  the  same.  But 
ateacher,  with  some  tens  of  children,  has  not  the 
same  opportunity  to  observe  the  individual 
child  as  have  the  parents.  The  mistakes  of 
the  teacher  are,  therefore,  far  more  numerous 
than  those  of  the  parents.  If  these  children 
would,  in  many  cases,  have  chosen  other 
parents,  they  would,  in  most  cases,  have 
chosen  other  teachers. 

"Born  educators"  with  keys  to  the  child- 
ren's souls  in  their  pockets  are,  indeed,  the 
unredeemable  promissory  notes  of  the  in- 
stitutional programme.  The  assurance  that 
the  children  in  collective  institutions  would  be 
cared  for  only  by  "born  educators"  is  as 
untenable  as  would  be  a  promise  that  their 
musical  training  would  be  directed  by  nobody 
short  of  a  Beethoven!  "Born  educators"  are 
not  only  as  rare  as  other  geniuses,  but  are 
also  most  difficult  to  discover.  For  how  can 
they  demonstrate  their  genius  except  in  the 


140  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

practice  of  educational  work?  And  often 
they  find  no  opportunity  to  educate;  an  ex- 
amination can,  for  instance,  just  as  little 
reveal  their  soul  power  as  it  can  that  of  a  poet. 
The  brilliant  and  eloquent  graduate  often  is, 
and  will  continue  to  be,  victorious  in  com- 
petition with  the  "born  educator."  And,  as 
everybody  knows,  the  result  frequently  is 
that  the  greatest  abominations  occur  at 
institutions  where  perverse  principals  infer- 
nally torment  the  children — principals  chosen 
by  boards  of  trustees  who  have  felt  convinced 
of  having  made  the  best  choice!  But  even 
in  those  cases  where  the  choice  has  been  good, 
how  much  remains  to  be  desired ! 

One  pedagogue,  for  instance,  may  have 
excellent  ideas,  but  be  lacking  in  nobility  of 
character.  Another  may  possess  great  psy- 
chological insight,  but  no  ability  in  the 
psychologically  correct  treatment  of  children. 
Here  may  be  found  pedagogical  genius,  but 
without  warmth  of  heart.  There,  heart  but 
no  sagacity.  Another  is  of  a  despotic  nature, 
and  in  spite  of  all  pretty  talk  of  children's 
rights,  he  violates  them  to  make  the  little 
ones  conform  to  his  ideas.  Still  another  is 
vacillating  and  has  no  authority. 


Education' for  Motherhood        141 

And  if  thus  already  the  first-rate  teachers 
are  deficient,  how  much  more  so  will  this  be 
the  case  with  those  mediocre  teachers  of 
whom  every  school  and  boarding-school  has  a 
majority! 

These  professional  educators, — as  they  are 
called  in  the  programme  for  upbringing  out- 
side of  the  home, — so  far  from  being  wholly 
filled  by  their  calling,  spiritually  liberated 
from  all  side  interests,  which,  according  to 
the  same  programme,  are  supposed  to  impede 
the  parents'  capabilities  as  educators, — these 
professionals  are  very  much  like  other  peo- 
ple, absorbed  by  their  own  sympathies  and 
antipathies,  conflicts  and  rivalries,  in  which 
the  children  frequently  become  involved. 

The  parents  would  stand  in  the  same  rela- 
tion to  all  these  institutions  as  they  now  do 
to  the  day  schools,  in  that  what  they  objected 
to  they  could  seldom  change.  But  if  the 
parents  were  not  content  to  remain  simply 
automata,  who  deliver  the  child-material  to  the 
institutions,  they  must,  on  the  one  hand,  en- 
deavour to  assert  their  own  opinion  as  against 
the  institutions  which  cause  contentions,  and, 
on  the  other,  try  to  make  use  of  the  children's 
home  visits  for  counteracting  such  influence 


142  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

of  the  school  as  they  consider  unfavourable. 
But  here  they  would  meet  with  the  same 
fundamental  'difficulty  which  arises  in  cases 
where  children,  as  a  consequence  of  divorce, 
are  periodically  with  either  father  or  mother. 
So  many  requisites  for  understanding  are 
lacking:  constraint  and  strangeness  have  to 
be  overcome;  a  nervous  tenderness  or  a  cold 
criticism  often  destroys  attempts  at  intimacy. 
In  a  word,  even  the  best  institutions  would 
show  the  same  dark  sides  as  do  the  homes, 
or  similar  ones,  but  unaccompanied  by  the 
bright  sides  of  the  homes,  which  outweigh 
their  shortcomings. 

Let  us  assume,  however,  that  the  choice  of 
principal  in  one  of  these  proposed  institutions 
has  been  a  happy  one.  Yet  such  a  teacher  has 
not  the  spontaneous  love  for  the  child  which 
may,  to  be  sure,  on  the  one  hand,  cause  paren- 
tal blindness,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  gives 
the  clearness  of  vision  which  belongs  to  love 
alone.  At  best  the  teacher  extends  to  the 
children  a  general  love,  or  a  personal  love  to 
one  child  here  and  there.  But  it  is  just  this 
personal  love  which  the  human  soul  needs  in 
order  to  burst  into  blossom. 

The  conditions  here  indicated  furnish  one 


Education  for  Motherhood        143 

of  tHe  reasons  why  children  from  charitable 
institutions  hardly  ever  become  prominent 
members  of  society.  The  main  reason,  it  is 
true,  is  that  the  children  for  whom  society  has 
had  to  care  in  institutions  have  often  sprung 
from  poorly  equipped  parents.  Moreover,  to 
be  sure,  the  prominent  individuals  in  a  nation 
are  always  few  in  comparison  with  the  others. 
Still,  if  we  can  expect  one  great  genius  in  each 
million  of  inhabitants,  one  in  a  million  in- 
stitutional children  may  be  expected  to  be 
really  excellent.  But  has  a  single  one  ever 
appeared?  Is  not,  on  the  contrary,  the  in- 
significance of  such  children  a  rule  with  few 
exceptions?  And  must  not  this  partly  depend 
on  this  very  system  of  upbringing?1 

Even  where  the  child-material  is  excellent, 
as  for  example  in  the  English  country  schools 
for  boys,  observations  have  led  to  the  belief 
that  these  schools  are  more  favourable  for  the 
preservation  of  the  national  type — for  good 
as  well  as  evil — than  for  the  development  of  the 
individual.  Here,  as  in  other  boarding-schools, 
certain  social  virtues  are  developed,  certain 

1  In  America  this  question  has  been  answered  in  the  affirma- 
tive by  some  investigator,  who  at  the  same  time  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  "Cottage"  system  gives  better  results  in 
every  way  than  the  large  institutions. — THE  AUTHOR. 


144  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

qualities  useful  in  public  life.  But  the  spring- 
ing up  of  new  types,  stronger  individual 
aptitudes,  more  sensitive  and  fine  soul  life  is 
not  favoured  by  any  kind  of  collective  edu- 
cation extending  through  the  larger  part  of 
youth.  A  period  of  institutional  life  has 
often  been  a  splendid  thing  for  children  who 
have  been  lonely  or  spoiled  at  home,  has 
hardened  them,  forced  them  to  subordinate 
their  own  egotism,  taught  them  consideration 
for  others,  and  common  responsibilities.  But 
even  if  institutions  can  thus  rough-plane  the 
material  that  is  to  become  a  member  of  so- 
ciety, nevertheless  they  cannot — if  they  take 
in  the  major  part  of  the  child's  education — 
accomplish  that  which  is  needed  first  of  all 
if  we  are  to  lift  ourselves  to  a  higher  spiritual 
plane  in  an  economically  just  society:  they 
cannot  deepen  the  emotional  life.  Continuity 
of  impressions  is  a  first  condition  for  such  a 
deepening.  But  the  upbringing  outside  of  the 
home,  which  would  leave  the  nursing  infants 
in  Miss  A.'s  hands,  the  kindergarten  children 
to  Miss  B.,  the  primary  school  children  to 
Miss  C.,  the  higher  grades  to  various  Misses, 
would  again  and  again  disrupt  the  fine  fibres 
with  which  the  child-heart  has  become  tied 


Education  for  Motherhood        145 

to  these  various  mother-substitutes.  At  last  the 
heart  would  lose  its  power  of  attachment,  just  as 
is  the  case  when  children  spend  their  lives  trav- 
elling and  only  get  into  hotel  relations,  never  in- 
to home  or  homeland  relations  with  the  world. 

The  psychological  progress  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  emotions  indicates  that  the  child 
should  learn  to  love  a  few  in  the  home  and 
in  its  native  place;  that  the  soul  should 
broaden  to  feelings  for  the  comrade  circle, 
finally  to  embrace  society  and  humanity. 
Every  effort  to  change  the  order  in  this  pro- 
gress of  growth  is  as  fruitless  as  to  put  plants 
in  the  ground  blossom  downward  and  roots  in 
the  air.  Want  of  insight  into  those  spiritual 
conditions  of  growth  is  the  principal  error 
in  the  programme  or  collective  upbringing. 
What  youth  would  have  left  of  soul  after  such 
an  education  would  barely  be  sufficient  for 
social  and  community  purposes;  for  the  needs 
of  the  personality  it  would  not  suffice. 

And  even  if  collective  education,  when  the 
school  age  is  reached,  were  arranged  as  it  is 
in  some  of  the  German  (in  many  ways  excel- 
lent) Landerziehungsheime,1  where  a  small 

1  These  schools  were  founded  by  Dr.  Herrmann  Lietz  after  the 
pattern  of  Abbotsholme  in  England.  His  schools  are:  Ilsenburg 


146  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

number  of  children  and  teachers  live  in  a 
separate  cottage  and  constitute  the  so-called 
"family,"  in  the  long  run  it  would  be  only  a 
poor  substitute  for  the  natural  family,  where 
care  and  anxiety,  help  and  comfort,  memories 
and  hopes,  work  and  festivity  crystallise 
around  a  nucleus,  combine  and  intensify 
the  emotions,  while  in  a  larger,  often-changing 
circle  even  the  most  beautiful  impressions  be- 
come weakened  and  shallow. 

The  very  worst  suggestion  which  has  ap- 
peared from  any  side  is  that  of  the  family 
colony,  with  common  kitchen  and  dining-room, 
common  play-room  and  care  of  the  babies, 
et  cetera.  Even  this  would  give  the  mothers 
freedom  to  pursue  professional  work  and  yet 
in  some  measure  retain  the  home  for  the 
children.  But  if  Satan  announced  a  prize 
competition  for  the  best  means  of  increasing 
hatred  on  earth,  this  reform  proposition  ought 
to  receive  the  first  prize.  That  seclusion  and 
introspection  which  are  necessary  for  mutual 
communication  between  husband  and  wife, 

for  small  boys,  Haubinda  for  the  intermediary  grades,  and  for  the 
high-school  period  Bieberstein.  Paul  Schub's  Landerziehungsheim 
Odenwaldschule  has  provided  for  the  home  feeling  and  the 
individual  development  to  the  greatest  extent  possible  in  a 
boarding  school.— THE  AUTHOR. 


Education  for  Motherhood        147 

if  they  want  to  grow  into  complementary 
personalities,  would  be  as  difficult  to  attain 
as  silence  in  the  market-place  for  the  enjoy- 
ment of  music.  The  unfortunate  children 
growing  up  in  such  a  family  colony  would 
be  cross-questioned,  commissioned,  corrected, 
and  teased.  Such  a  colony,  far  from  broad- 
ening the  children's  interests  outside  their 
own  circle — as  the  proposers  contend — and 
teaching  them  amiable  social  ways,  would  cause 
torment  to  independent  spirits,  and  increase 
dulness  in  the  constrained.  Besides,  children 
seldom  have  more  affection  to  spend  than  they 
abundantly  need  for  their  parents,  and  parents 
seldom  have  more  patience  than  they  abun- 
dantly need  for  their  own  children. 

Countless  causes  for  friction  would  arise 
among  the  grown-ups  as  a  result  of  differences 
between  the  children,  between  husbands  on 
account  of  wives,  and  between  wives  on  account 
of  husbands.  Though  in  the  beginning  all 
were  harmony,  it  would  end  in  discord,  after 
the  well-known  pattern  of  most  similar  or  even 
less  intimate  groupings. 

These  reasons  against  the  disintegration  of 
the  home  might  be  multiplied.  I  wish  now 
only  to  emphasise  one  point  of  view,  which  I 


148  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

have  often  advanced  before.  Women  have 
always,  and  not  least  in  America,1  by  the  trend 
their  own  social  work  has  taken,  been  able  to 
show  to  what  an  extent  society  needs  that  the 
specially  womanly,  that  is,  motherly,  feelings 
and  outlook  be  asserted  in  action.  These 
motherly  ways  of  feeling  and  thinking  have 
acquired  their  characteristics  and  their  sta- 
bility by  reason  of  the  hitherto  existing  divi- 
sion of  labour,  in  which  the  task  of  making  the 
home  and  rearing  the  children  created  "  wo- 
manliness" with  its  strength  and  its  weakness, 
just  as  the  outward  struggle  for  existence, 
the  competitive  field  of  labour,  created  the 
strength  and  weakness  of  " manliness." 

That  women,  during  their  protected,  in- 
wardly concentrated  life,  would  acquire  other 
emotional  standards,  other  habits  of  thought 
than  men,  is  obvious.  Hitherto,  however, 
they  have  had  very  small  opportunities  to 
invest  their  stored  wealth  in  the  upbuilding 
of  this  " man-made  world."  Consequently, 
there  is  a  crying  need  of  womanliness,  especially 
motherliness,  in  public  life.  But  motherliness 

*  x  I  have  received  valuable  information  in  this  respect  through 
Rheta  Child  Dorr's  book,  What  Eight  Million  Women  Want. — THE 
AUTHOR. 


Education  for  Motherhood        149 

is  no  more  permanent  than  any  other  state  of 
the  soul.  Soul  sources  are  like  the  water  in 
nature,  sometimes  abundant,  sometimes  scant, 
clear  to-day,  turbid  to-morrow,  now  flowing, 
then  again  frozen — all  according  to  the  soil 
through  which  it  finds  its  way,  and  the  tem- 
perature it  meets.  If  now  the  division  of 
labour  be  changed  to  such  an  extent  that  all 
women  during  the  whole  work-period — that 
is,  about  forty  years — devote  themselves  to 
outside  occupations,  while  a  minority  of  wo- 
men, who  are  often  not  mothers  themselves, 
professionally  fill  the  need  for  child-rearing, 
then  motherliness  will  diminish  generation 
after  generation.  For  it  is  not  alone  the 
bearing  of  children,  neither  is  it  the  upbringing 
alone,  that  develops  motherliness,  but  both 
together  are  needed.  The  result  will  be  that 
women's  contribution  to  society  will  be  similar 
to  that  of  men.  They  will  fill  with  stones  the 
''springs  in  the  valley  of  sorrow "  which  the 
homes,  in  spite  of  everything,  have  been 
hitherto  in  our  hard  and  arid  existence.  The 
new  world,  which  the  women  soon  will  have  a 
hand  in  making,  will  be  no  more  beautiful,  no 
warmer,  than  the  present.  Even  a  very  much 
more  rational  and  just  social  order  cannot 


150  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood  ( 

furnish  compensation  for  all  the  subtle  and 
immeasurable  riches  which  directly  and  in- 
directly have  flowed  from  the  home. 

If  the  destruction  of  the  homes  were  the 
price  the  race  must  pay  for  woman's  attain- 
ment of  full  human  dignity  and  citizenship, 
then  the  price  would  be  too  high.  If  the 
female  parasites  cannot  be  gotten  rid  of  in 
any  other  way  than  by  driving  all  women  out 
of  the  homes  to  outside  departments  of  labour, 
let  us  rather,  then,  allow  the  parasites  to 
flourish,  since  of  two  social  evils  this  would  be 
the  lesser. 

But  humanity  will  not  have  to  choose 
between  two  such  evils.  The  parasitical 
family  woman  just  as  much  as  the  worn-out 
family  drudge,  the  family  egoism  piling  up 
wealth  and  the  economically  harassed  family 
life,  as  well  as  other  ignoble  constituents  which 
riches  as  well  as  poverty  bring  into  the  homes, 
are  all  part  and  parcel  of  the  present  social 
order.  A  society  which  sharply  restricts 
inheritances,  but  protects  the  right  of  all 
children  to  the  full  development  of  their 
powers;  which  demands  labour  of  all  its 
members,  but  allows  its  women  to  choose 
between  the  vocation  of  motherhood  or  out- 


Education  for  Motherhood        151 

side  work;  a  society  in  which  attempts  to  live 
without  work  will  be  dealt  with  in  the  same 
manner  as  forgery — such  a  society  is  coming. 
In  this  society,  mother-care  will  be  a  well-paid 
public  service  to  which  an  effectual  supervision 
is  given,  and  for  which  state  control  is  accepted. 
Without  such  radical  social  transformations, 
renaissance  of  the  family  life  is  not  even 
conceivable.  And  it  is  not  likely  to  become 
actual  before  the  changing  orders  of  econo- 
mics and  a  new  religion  combine  their  forces. 


in 


As  I  have  already  stated,  economy  and 
religion  determine  the  trend  of  life,  espe- 
cially that  of  family  life.  And  for  this  reason 
the  tide  of  the  age,  which  has  already  turned 
women  outward,  is  likely  to  wax  stronger 
until  a  new  religion  once  again  shall  kindle 
the  soul  of  the  people  with  a  burning  desire 
for  great  spiritual  values. 

Certain  signs  have  appeared,  indicating 
that  the  religious  as  well  as  the  economic 
transformation  is  in  progress.  The  heart- 
beat of  humanity  has  always  gone  thus:  after 
the  outflowing,  the  inflowing — from  the  sur- 


152  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

face  back  to  the  heart.  The  new  religion  will 
probably  not  be  a  "  refined "  Christianity. 
But  the  deepest  experiences  of  the  race,  to 
which  Christianity  gave  expression  in  myths 
and  symbols  now  worn  out,  will  reassert 
themselves  in  a  new  form.  And  the  highest 
ideas  which  Christianity  has  given  to  human- 
ity will  again  become  life-determining  forces, 
although  on  other  grounds. 

The  crisis  through  which  all  the  assets 
generally  considered  "  Christian "  and  "  fem- 
inine" are  now  passing  arose  out  of  their  sharp 
contrast  to  the  present  social  development  or 
outlook  on  life.  Women  have  no  longer  that 
Christian  faith,  as  a  mainstay  against  the 
power  of  the  times,  which  among  other  things 
made  them  willing  to  accept  as  many  children 
as  it  "pleased  God  to  send/'  Implicit  devo- 
tion and  self-sacrifice  are  no  longer  women's 
ideal.  The  legitimate  individualism  which 
has  made  the  modern  women  determined  also 
"to  live  their  own  lives"  has,  with  many, 
resulted  in  a  decision  to  throw  off  "sexual 
slavery  in  the  family. "  From  this  individual- 
ism women  can  be  converted  only  through  a 
new  religious  belief,  namely,  that  every  human 
being  "lives  his  own  life"  in  the  greatest  and 


Education  for  Motherhood        153 

most  beautiful  sense  when  his  will  is  in  har- 
mony with  that  mighty  will  to  create  of  which 
the  whole  evolution — of  culture  as  well  as  of 
nature — bears  witness. 

But  the  will  to  create,  which  is  the  mysteri- 
ous innermost  nature  of  life,  nowhere  reveals 
itself  more  simply  or  more  strongly  than  in 
that  love  out  of  which  new  beings  spring,  and 
in  the  parental  devotion  to  these  new  beings. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  new  religion, 
the  professional  and  social  work,  which  by 
many  modern  women  is  considered  an  obstacle 
to  motherhood  and  of  greater  social  value  than 
the  latter,  will  only  be  a  ''tithe  of  mint  and 
anise  and  cummin"  when  husbands  and  wives, 
well  equipped  for  parenthood,  do  not  give  the 
race  their  flesh  and  blood.  All  that  the  in- 
telligence and  genius  of  men  and  women  can 
do  for  eugenics  and  the  care  of  infants,  for 
education  and  schools,  is  of  small  conse- 
quence so  long  as  it  is  lavished  on  a  human 
material  constantly  shrinking  in  value  because 
produced  by  physically  and  psychically  in- 
ferior parents,  while  those  who  have  the 
making  of  good  parents  cannot  afford,  or  have 
not  the  will,  to  supply  children  to  the  race. 
Or,  as  a  famous  botanist  has  vigorously  ex- 


154  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

pressed  it:  "A  single  microscopic  cell  from 
which  one  great  human  being  springs  is  of 
greater  importance  to  the  race  than  the  pains- 
taking efforts  of  a  hundred  thousand  child- 
rearers  and  educators  with  a  child-material 
below  par." 

This  conception  must  become  dominant 
before  any  " education  for  motherhood"  can 
be  effective.  Thoughts  and  emotions,  will 
and  imagination,  must  be  converted  and  sanc- 
tified through  a  religion  that  considers  the 
present  superficial  culture  as  a  fall  of  man. 
The  low  ideal  of  happiness  held  by  an  irre- 
ligious race — a  more  and  more  luxurious,  easy, 
gliding,  automobile  existence — will  lose  its 
attraction  for  humanity  through  the  religious 
awakening.  Men  and  women  will  once  more 
dream  of  noble  and  dangerous  deeds.  We 
will  have  an  epoch  of  aviation  also  in  a 
spiritual  sense.  The  heroic  attitude  toward 
and  in  life,  which  the  world  of  antiquity  and 
Nietzsche  in  the  modern  world  represent, 
will  again  become  the  ideal  of  happiness  which 
guides  the  leaders  of  the  race.  Even  the 
many  will  again  desire  the  deep  feeling,  the 
strong  emotions  and  difficult  tasks, — despite 
the  dangers,  sufferings,  and  sorrows  they  may 


Education  for  Motherhood        155 

bring.  For  the  ideal  of  happiness  will  not 
then,  as  now,  be  the  easiest  existence,  but  the 
one  which  allows  the  greatest  expenditure  of 
power. 

For  the  majority  of  women  family  life 
offers  this  more  toilsome  and  troubled,  but 
also  more  rich  and  joyous  existence.  But  not 
family  life  alone!  Power  expands  also  in  tak- 
ing part  in  the  organisation  of  a  more  and  more 
perfect  society,  in  a  more  concerted  progress 
toward  a  wiser  and  higher  moral  goal.  This 
too  is  a  collaboration  with  the  Will  to  create, 
an  adjusting  of  one's  own  individuality  to 
individual  assets  beyond,  or,  in  other  words, 
a  form  of  the  new  religious  worship. 

The  morning  star  which  augurs  the  birth 
of  the  new  religion  is  already  visible  on  the 
horizon.  Not  only  economic  and  democratic 
forces  are  at  work  for  the  new  social  order; 
there  are  also  religious  ones.  To  the  same 
extent  that  these  forces  increase  in  strength 
we  shall  draw  nearer  to  that  state  which  is 
to  relieve  the  present  chaotic  and  energy- 
wasting  society,  the  present  soulless  and  aim- 
less existence. 

And  not  until  then  are  we  likely  to  have 
mothers  well  trained  for  the  vocation  of 


156  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

motherhood  and  well  cared  for  by  society 
during  the  discharge  of  this  duty. 

A  new  time  comes,  as  a  rule,  with  quiet  and 
small  steps,  only  rarely  with  great,  swift 
strides.  One  small  step  is  the  training  of  girls 
and  boys  in  sexual  hygiene  and  in  their  duties 
toward  themselves  as  future  parents.  An- 
other is  the  realisation  that  by  a  better 
physical  development  through  gymnastics, 
athletics,  dancing,  etc. — a  development  highly 
important  for  the  new  race — strength  and 
beauty  will  be  gained  also  for  the  children. 
A  third  is  the  recognition  in  Europe,  as  well 
as  in  America,  of  the  obvious  need  of  a  train- 
ing for  the  inherently  womanly  vocations. 
To  begin  with,  we  have  discovered  that  it  is 
only  an  empty  phrase  to  assert  that  industry 
has  wholly  supplanted  the  business  of  the 
household,  since  very  many  tasks  remain 
which  have  to  be  done  in  the  home.  And 
further,  we  have  grown  to  understand  that  to 
purchase  all  the  necessities  of  life  ready-made 
lowers  the  family's  standard  of  living  and 
increases  the  cost  more  than  if  the  wife  per- 
formed certain  work  in  the  home.  We  have 
begun  to  see  that  the  value  of  the  wife's 
industrial  work  does  not,  from  a  national 


Education  for  Motherhood        157 

economic  point  of  view,  compensate  for  the 
family's  higher  cost  of  living,  the  women's 
indisposition  toward  motherhood,  and  incapa- 
city for  it,  the  neglect  of  the  children  and  the 
home  and  the  consequent  increase  of  alcohol- 
ism and  criminality,  and  finally  the  constantly 
growing  expense  to  the  state  of  the  rearing  and 
care  of  the  children  in  public  and  charitable 
institutions. 

As  a  result  of  these  observations,  women 
especially,  but  also  men,  have  begun  to  ad- 
vocate cooking-schools,  courses  in  domestic 
science  and  household  economics.  Such 
courses  are  given  in  conjunction  with  the 
public  schools  and  colleges,  or  as  independent 
courses,  whether  or  not  combined  with  the 
care  of  children.  "Mother  schools,"  child- 
training  schools,  kindergarten  schools,  lecture 
courses  in  child-psychology  and  in  experi- 
mental psychology,  everywhere  are  springing 
into  existence.  In  a  word,  efforts  are  being 
made  to  remedy  the  ignorance  of  the  young 
women  of  the  present  generation  as  to  the 
mission  of  the  home — an  ignorance  which  is  the 
result,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  early  entering 
into  industrial  labour,  on  the  other  hand,  of  the 
long  studies. 


158  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

We  are  ready  to  deplore  the  colossal  mis- 
management which  has  gone  on  century  after 
century  in  allowing  women  to  come  unpre- 
pared to  their  most  important  vocation, — 
for  society  and  for  the  race, — the  bearing  and 
rearing  of  children.  Information  as  to  sexual 
matters  is  still,  by  many,  considered  an 
abomination — in  Germany  a  girl  was  expelled 
from  a  boarding-school  because  she  possessed  a 
scientific  book  on  the  "  sex-life  of  plants" ! — but 
it  is  now  everywhere  imparted  by  all  thought- 
ful educators.  The  moderate  feminists,  at 
least  in  Europe,  are  using  all  these  measures  in 
their  endeavour  to  make  women  professionally 
capable  in  their  old  department  of  labour. 
They  understand  that  only  increased  capa- 
bility can  give  the  inwardly  directed  expendi- 
ture of  woman's  power  a  new  dignity,  make 
it  a  new  social  asset. 

Considering  this  training  by  itself,  I  believe 
that  the  cooking  course  has  its  right  place  in 
the  early  teens  when  it  is  enjoyed  by  most 
girls  as  a  change  from  book-studies,  and  as  a 
knowledge  of  which  they  may  easily  make 
use.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  that  age  is 
the  psychologically  correct  time  for  the 
more  serious  and  important  education  in 


Education  for  Motherhood        159 

the  art  of  home-making  and  the  duties  of 
motherhood. 

The  fundamental  evil  of  the  present  school- 
system  is  its  tendency  to  line  up  the  manifold 
desirable  teachings  for  the  young  like  soldiers 
on  parade,  namely,  on  graduation  day.  This 
is  an  insurmountable  obstacle  to  thoroughness 
and  veracity  in  instruction,  qualities  which 
cannot  be  fully  attained  without  perfect  peace 
for  both  teachers  and  pupils — a  peace  which 
is  never  associated  with  fixed  courses  and 
examinations.  Without  serenity,  no  know- 
ledge can  fully  ring  out,  vibrating  through 
thought,  feeling,  will,  and  imagination.  But 
only  by  such  a  resonance  does  the  knowledge 
manifest  itself  as  living,  only  thus  does  it 
become  a  power  for  growth  within  the  indi- 
vidual. 

And  this  is  what  education  for  motherhood 
must  accomplish;  otherwise  it  is  a  failure. 
During  the  early  "  teens "  the  young  girls' 
minds  are  already  crammed  with  abstract 
knowledge  which  frequently  they  have  neither 
desired  nor  needed.  Then  comes  this  educa- 
tion for  motherhood  for  which  they  have  no 
direct  use,  and  it  comes  at  a  time  when  their 
minds  are  mostly  filled  with  thoughts  and 


i6o  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

dreams  about  the  unknown  life  which  attracts 
all  their  yearning,  though  as  yet  in  indefinite 
forms.  It  consequently  follows  that  they 
will  come  absent-minded  to  the  instruction 
in  the  vocation  of  motherhood,  and  when 
later  in  life  they  stand  before  the  reality,  they 
will  have  forgotten  most  of  this  teaching,  as 
they  forget  so  much  of  the  other  instruction 
they  have  received  without  longing  for  it, 
and  without  the  personal  assimilation  referred 
to  above. 

Even  if  one  takes  this  instruction  as  seri- 
ously as,  for  example,  the  German  woman 
suffragists  desire, — who  endeavour  to  intro- 
duce an  obligatory  year-long  course  for  all 
girls,  as  a  preparation  for  motherhood, — 
such  preparation,  for  the  reasons  mentioned 
heretofore,  would  in  reality  be  far  from  as 
effective  as  a  training  given  some  years  later. 
In  my  opinion,  girls  as  well  as  boys,  after 
having  at  about  the  age  of  fifteen  finished  the 
common  preparatory  school — which  ought  to 
be  entirely  free  from  examinations — should 
devote  themselves  to  their  special  professional 
training,  which,  in  the  case  of  the  majority, 
would  be  completed  at  about  the  age  of  twenty. 
And  this  is  the  age  at  which  I  would  advocate 


Education  for  Motherhood        161 

a  year  of  social  service  for  women  as  well  as 
for  men.  In  the  states  that  enforce  military 
training,  such  a  period  of  service  is  already 
required  of  the  men  and  it  often  lasts  several 
years.  I  consider  a  parallel  service  for  women 
the  right  education  for  the  care  of  home  and 
children.  And  this  period  of  training  should 
be  set  at  the  psychologically  well  adapted 
age  when  many  of  the  young  women  already 
look  forward  to  a  home  of  their  own,  or  at 
least  have  become  conscious  of  a  longing  for 
home  and  children. 

The  year  of  training  should  be  divided  into 
three  courses: — 

1 .  A  theoretic  course  in  national  economics, 
the  fundamental  hygienic  and  aesthetic  prin- 
ciples for  the  planning  of  a  home  and  the 
running  of  a  household.     This  course  would 
hardly   need   to   include   practical   exercises, 
since  sewing  and  cooking  classes,  and  the  like, 
form  a  part  of  the  curriculum  in  the  present- 
day  schools,  and  thus  the  first  principles  of 
domestic  science  are  there  imparted. 

2.  A  theoretic  course  in  hygiene,  psycho- 
logy, and  education  for  normal  children,  with 
directions  for  the  recognition  of  abnormalities. 

3.  A  theoretic  course  in  the  physical  and 


162  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

psychical  duties  of  a  mother  before  and  after 
the  birth  of  a  child,  and  the  fundamental 
principles  of  eugenics. 

To  these  theoretic  courses  must  be  added 
practical  training  in  the  care  of  children,  which 
should  embrace  knowledge  of  the  child's 
proper  nourishment,  clothing,  and  sleep;  its 
physical  exercise,  play,  and  other  occupations; 
and  its  care  in  case  of  sickness  and  accident. 
Children's  asylums,  day-nurseries  and  hos- 
pitals, and  mother-homes  (where  mothers  with 
children  would  find  refuge  for  shorter  or  longer 
periods)  would  give  opportunity  for  such  train- 
ing led  by  the  teachers. 

Already  in  the  year  1900  (in  The  Century  of 
the  Child,  first  edition),  I  had  proposed  a  ser- 
vice for  women  similar  to  the  compulsory 
military  service  for  men.  Such  propositions 
had  been  made  in  Sweden  even  earlier  from 
several  quarters.  But  they  had  only  referred 
to  the  obligatory  training  of  women  in  the  care 
of  the  sick  and  their  compulsory  service  as 
nurses  in  time  of  war.  My  plan,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  that  the  training  should  principally 
comprise  domestic  science  and  the  care  of 
children,  although  the  rudiments  of  hygiene 
and  therapeutics  ought  also  to  be  considered. 


Education  for  Motherhood        163 

In  1900,  no  one  took  up  my  proposition,  not 
even  in  order  to  attack  it.  During  the  last 
twelve  years,  this  same  proposition,  but  quite 
independently  of  me,  has  been  put  forth  from 
many  sides,  not  alone  from  Sweden,  but  from 
Norway,  Germany,  and  elsewhere,  and  by  men 
as  well  as  women.  Some  of  these — rather 
unfortunately  in  my  opinion — have  connected 
the  question  of  such  a  year  of  social  service  for 
woman  with  the  question  of  woman  suffrage. 
This  has  come  from  quarters  where  it  is  con- 
sidered that  men's  right  to  suffrage  answers 
to  their  military  duty.  For  my  part,  I  have 
never  connected  these  two  questions,  since 
I  consider  that  the  duty  of  paying  taxes,  equal 
for  men  and  women,  corresponds  to  their  equal 
rights  of  suffrage,  and,  besides,  that  society's 
need  of  the  women's  point  of  view  as  well  as  of 
that  of  men  fully  justifies  their  eligibility  to 
office.  And,  if  we  seek  a  parallel  to  man's 
sacrifice  of  life  and  limb  or  health  on  the 
battlefield,  we  find  it  in  child-bearing,  a  bat- 
tlefield where  many  women  give  their  lives  or 
become  invalids  for  the  rest  of  their  days. 

The  duty  of  training  for  social  service  as 
mother  or  soldier,  in  my  opinion,  naturally 
follows  from  the  education  that  society  has 


1 64  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

given  the  young,  an  education  which,  in 
regard  to  professional  training,  they  must  repay 
by  efficient  work  in  their  various  professions, 
but  also  by  preparing  themselves  to  defend 
and  promote  the  culture  of  which  they  are 
beneficiaries.  The  natural  division  of  labour 
will  then  be  that  the  men  prepare  themselves 
to  defend  the  country  in  case  of  an  impending 
peril,  and  to  be  helpful  in  times  of  disaster, 
while  the  women  prepare  themselves  to  de- 
fend and  care  for  the  new  generation  on  which 
the  future  depends. 

In  the  distant  future,  when  military  service 
shall  no  longer  be  needed,  and  at  present,  in 
countries  where  it  is  not  enforced,  all  young 
men  ought  to  have  some  such  training  as  that 
of  which  the  Scout  movement  is,  in  a  certain 
sense,  a  beginning — a  training  in  readiness  and 
ability  to  assist  in  case  of  natural  calamities 
and  other  accidents  which  may  befall  society 
or  individuals.  Even  now,  it  is  the  soldiers 
and  seamen  who,  at  times  of  fire,  railroad  and 
mine  accidents,  floods  and  earthquakes,  show 
themselves  the  best  helpers,  because  of  their 
habits  of  discipline,  and  of  swift  and  efficient 
action.  .Boys  ought  to  be  taught — as  is 
done  here  and  there  already — the  preparation 


Education  for  Motherhood        165 

of  the  plainest  dishes  and  the  simplest  mending 
of  clothes,  in  order  that  they  may  not  be 
utterly  helpless  in  any  situation  in  which  they 
may  find  themselves  in  life.  And  the  young 
man  should,  during  his  year  of  social  service, 
receive  instruction  in  the  first  principles  of 
eugenics  and  hygiene. 

Young  men  and  women  ought  also,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  to  get  some  knowledge  of  the 
essential  features  of  the  structure  of  society. 
This  may  be  given  already  during  the  school 
period — as  has  very  successfully  been  tried 
at  an  excellent  coeducational  reform  school 
in  Sweden — if  the  knowledge  be  not  imparted 
through  dry  discourses.  In  this  school,  the 
young  people  are  allowed,  under  the  guidance 
of  an  expert  teacher,  to  play  at  parliament 
two  hours  a  week  during  some  years.  They 
have  elections,  committee-meetings,  party 
divisions,  motions,  and  discussions,  just  as 
in  the  national  legislature.  Even  the  rudi- 
ments of  national  economy  can  in  such  a 
manner  be  made  living  and  interesting. 

That  all  of  this  directly  belongs  to  woman's 
education  for  social  motherhood,  and  in- 
directly <\lso  to  her  vacation  as  the  mother  of 
future  members  of  society,  needs  no  further 


1 66  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

proof.  For  men,  as  well  as  for  women,  the 
social-service  year  would  not  be  wasted  even 
if  many  would  have  no  occasion  personally  to 
use  for  their  own  individual  benefit  all  the 
knowledge  gained.  There  exists  no  woman 
who  does  not,  in  some  way  or  other,  come  into 
contact  with  children.  And  it  is  increasingly 
rare  for  women  not  to  find  opportunities  in 
social  work  to  use  the  knowledge  gained  during 
a  year's  instruction  in  the  care  of  children, 
hygiene,  eugenics,  domestic  science,  and  na- 
tional economy.  But  far  beyond  and  above 
the  benefits  which  understanding  of  this  or 
that  individual  case  would  bring,  is  the  awak- 
ening to  social  responsibility  and  the  levelling  of 
class  distinction  which  such  a  year  of  obligatory 
social  service  would  bring  to  the  daughter 
of  the  millionaire  and  the  factory  girl  alike. 
As  guides  in  the  instruction  of  young  women 
I  would  choose  noble  matrons,  serene  as 
priestesses,  who  themselves  have  fulfilled  the 
mission  of  motherhood — women  ripened  into 
sweetness  of  wisdom,  and  with  power  to 
impart  vividly  the  fruits  of  their  experience  to 
the  young  who,  some  day  standing  before  the 
serious  task  of  making  a  home  and  bringing 
up  children,  may  perhaps  by  a  single  word  of 


Education  for  Motherhood        167 

advice  remembered  in  time' save  life's  happi- 
ness for  themselves. 

As  a  transition  toward  a  legally  established 
social-service  year  for  women,  I  think  it  might 
be  a  good  plan  to  make  a  course  in  housekeep- 
ing and  the  care  of  children  a  condition  of 
the  right  to  marry.  This  would  result  in  the 
private  establishment  of  such  courses  every- 
where. But,  on  the  one  hand,  the  state  would 
have  no  control  over  their  character,  and  on 
the  other,  these  courses  would  mostly  be  taken 
during  the  above-mentioned  and  least  appro- 
priate age,  while  in  cases  when  this  would  not 
be  true,  they  might  come  as  an  unwelcome 
compulsion  later  on.  In  consideration  of  all 
these  reasons,  it  is  best  to  fix  our  eyes  upon  an 
obligatory  year  of  service  for  women  as  a  goal 
to  be  realised  in  the  near  future.  The  nation 
which  tried  this  out  would  find  its  health  and 
prosperity  increased  after  a  few  generations 
in  a  measure  that  would  thoroughly  com- 
pensate for  the  cost  involved.  Such  a  cost  need 
not,  however,  be  as  great  as  it  is  for  the  com- 
pulsory military  training  of  men.  To  be  sure, 
certain  buildings  would  have  to  be  erected, — 
suitable  homes  for  the  teachers  and  students 
who  were  not  living  in  the  neighbourhood  of 


1 68  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

the  training  centres, —  but  appropriate  lecture- 
halls  would,  in  most  cases,  already  be  found  on 
the  spot.  And  while  the  service  of  the  men 
does  not  confer  any  direct  benefit  to  society 
in  times  of  peace,  the  service  of  the  women 
would  place  a  large  working  force  at  the  dis- 
posal of  society  for  the  care  of  the  sick  and 
of  children  and  of  all  in  need.  In  each  centre, 
various  energy-saving  combinations  would  be 
possible.  As  an  example  may  be  irientioned 
that  in  Stockholm  the  feeding  of  poor  child- 
ren has  been  combined  with  the  schools  of 
domestic  science.  These  embrace  not  only 
cooking  and  similar  subjects,  but  also  a  course 
in  the  care  of  children,  which  in  turn  is  com- 
bined with  day-nurseries.  Dining-rooms  for 
working-women  are  also  combined  with  the 
cooking-school.  By  wise,  womanly  organisa- 
tion, there  are  consequently  not  less  than  six 
socially  useful  enterprises  which  directly  sup- 
port each  other. 

These  suggestions  suffice  to  show  in  what 
direction  one  must  go  in  order  to  make  prac- 
ticable the  use  of  the  year  of  social  service  for 
women.  Different  conditions  in  different  na- 
tions, and  in  various  districts  within  each 
country,  would  dictate  a  variety  of  applica- 


Education  for  Motherhood        169 

tions  and  a  detailed  programme  would  be  as 
impossible  as  unnecessary. 

Only  certain  essential  conditions  would  need 
to  be  established  everywhere.  In  the  first 
place,  a  higher  marriage  age  for  women, 
the  making  of  the  legal  marriage  age  for  women 
the  same  as  for  men,  twenty-one,  has  been 
proved  to  be  conducive  to  the  betterment  of 
society  and  the  race.  Secondly,  that  the  year 
between  twenty  and  twenty-one  be  established 
as  the  year  for  social  service,  although — as  is 
now  the  case  for  men- — an  earlier  or  later  enter- 
ing into  service  for  valid  reasons  might  be 
allowed.  Thirdly,  that  complete  freedom 
from  service  must  be  granted  for  reasons 
similar  to  those  which  now  exempt  men  from 
military  service. 

In  analogy  with  men,  the  women  under 
obligation  to  serve  ought  to  have  free  choice, 
within  certain  limits,  in  regard  to  the  place 
of  training,  and  also  in  regard  to  the  selection 
of  the  practical  and  theoretic  courses  in  which 
they  would  participate.  For  example,  it 
would  be  foolish  to  waste  time  on  such  courses 
as  have  already  been  taken  during  medical 
or  normal-school  studies,  and  so  forth.  And, 
similarly,  it  would  be  a  great  waste  of  energy 


170  The  Renaissance  of  Motherhood 

if  one  already  graduated  as  a  trained  nurse 
were  commanded  to  do  duty  in  a  hospital,  or 
if  a  capable  and  well-informed  child-nurse 
were  sent  to  a  children's  home,  and  so  on. 
The  object  should  be  so  to  arrange  the  training 
that  each  one  to  the  greatest  possible  extent 
would  fill  up  the  gaps  in  her  knowledge. 

After  some  generations  of  such  earnest 
education,  it  would  be  found  that,  just  as  the 
training  for  the  teacher's  calling  has  supplied 
the  countries  with  good  teaching  forces,  while 
the  same  forces  untrained  would  have  re- 
mained insignificant;  the  education  for  moth- 
erhood would  supply  the  various  nations  with 
many  good  mothers  well  able  to  fulfil  the 
duties  of  the  home.  Such  "born  educators" 
as  did  not  become  mothers  would  find  work 
enough  in  institutions  where  children  must  be 
cared  for  by  society  because  of  the  death  or 
the  viciousness  or  the  work  of  their  parents. 

The  attitude  of  the  women,  once  they  have 
gained  full  suffrage,  toward  the  questions 
herein  dealt  with,  will  be  the  great  test  of  the 
nature  of  their  social  motherliness.  If  they 
comprehend  that  the  education  of  the  mothers, 
and  the  rendering  secure  the  functions  of  the 
mothers,  is  the  life-question  of  the  race,  they 


Education  for  Motherhood        171 

will  then  succeed  in  finding  the  means  of 
meeting  these  demands. 

This  sounds  too  optimistic  to  many  readers. 
But  did  humanity  ever  halt  helplessly  before 
any  of  its  vital  needs?  Least  of  all  could  this 
happen  in  America,  where  the  very  air  rever- 
berates with  songs  of  faith  in  the  power  of 
will,  with  the  hope  of  realisation  of  most 
wonderful  dreams.  From  the  Pilgrim  Fathers, 
from  the  wars  of  independence  and  secession, 
we  have  strong  evidence  of  the  power  of  will 
over  the  destiny  of  the  American  people. 
Ever  since,  in  my  youth,  I  listened  to  Emer- 
son's prophetic  words,  and  Whitman's  songs 
of  the  creative  power  of  the  soul  and  of  the 
pliability  of  life  in  the  moulding  grasp  of  this 
power,  I  have  again  and  again  received  new 
impressions — through  thinkers,  moralists,  and 
sects — of  this  typically  American  spirit.  To 
be  sure,  it  may  sometimes  lapse  into  boastful- 
ness,  or  degenerate  into  superstition,  as,  for 
instance,  when  it  is  believed  that  the  will  can 
conquer  every  disease  and  even  abolish  death. 
But  in  itself  this  sovereign  assurance  of  the 
victory  of  will,  faith,  and  hope  is  the  world's 
greatest  power  for  overcoming  evil  with  good. 


By  ELLEN 


The  Century  of  the  Child 

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CONTENTS:  The  Right  of  the  Child  to  Choose  His 
Parents,  The  Unborn  Race  and  Woman's  Work,  Education, 
Homelesstjess,  Soul  Murder  in  the  Schools,  The  School  of 
the  Future,  Religious  Instruction,  Child  Labor  and  the 
Crimes  of  Children.  This  book  has  gone  through  more 
than  twenty  German  Editions  and  has  been  published  in 
several  European  countries. 

"A  powerful  book."— #.  Y.  Times. 

"A  profound  and  analytical  discussion  by  ft  great  Scandinavian 
teacher,  of  the  reasons  why  modern  education  does  not  better 
educate."— N.  Y.  Christian  Herald. 

The  Education  of  the  Child 

Reprinted  from  the  Authorized  American  Edition  of 
The  Century  of  the  Child  With  Introductory  Note  by 
EDWARD  BOK. 

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"Nothing  finer  on  the  wise  education  of  the  child  has  ever  been 
brought  into  print.  To  me  this  chapter  is  a  perfect  classic;  it  points 
the  way  straight  for  every  parent,  and  it  should  find  a  place  in  every 
home  in  America  where  there  is  a  child."— EDWARD  BOK,  Editor 
of  the  Ladies'  Home  Journal. 

"This  book,  by  one  of  the  most  thoughtful  students  of  child  life 
among  current  writers,  is  one  that  will  prove  invaluable  to  parents 
who  desire  to  develop  in  their  children  that  strength  of  character, 
self-control  and  personality  that  alone  makes  for  a  wen-rounded  1 
ful  and  happy  lite."-Baltimore  Sun. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


By  ELLEN 


Love  and  Marriage 

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"One  of  the  profoundest  and  most  important  pronouncements  of 
the  woman's  movement  that  has  yet  found  expression.  .  .  .  Intensely 
modern  in  her  attitude,  Miss  Key  has  found  a  place  for  all  the 
conflicting  philosophies  of  the  day,  has  taken  what  is  good  from  each, 
has  affected  the  compromise,  which  is  always  the  road  to  advance- 
ment, between  individualism  and  socialism,  realism  and  idealism, 
morality  and  the  new  thought.  She  is  more  than  a  metaphysical 
philosopher.  She  is  a  seer,  a  prophet.  She  brings  to  her  aid 
psychology,  history,  science,  and  then  something  more — inspiration 
and  hope." — Boston  Transcript. 

The  Woman  Movement 

Translated  by  Namah  Bouton  Borthwick,  A.M. 
With  an  Introduction  by  Havelock  Ellis 

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This  is  not  a  history  of  the  woman's  movement,  but  a  statement 
of  what  Ellen  Key  considers  to  be  the  new  phase  it  is  now  entering 
on,  a  phase  in  which  the  claim  to  exert  the  rights  and  functions  of 
men  is  less  important  than  the  claims  of  woman's  rights  as  the 
mother  and  educator  of  the  coming  generation. 

Rahel  Varnhagen 

A  Portrait 

Translated  by  Arthur  E.  Chater 

With  an  Introduction  by  Havelock  Ellis 

72°.    With  Portraits.    Net  $1.50.    By  mail,  $1.65 

A  biography  from  original  sources  of  one  who  has  been  described 
as  among  the  first  and  greatest  of  modern  women.  The  book  is  a 
portrait  sketch  of  Rahel  Varnhagen,  and  her  characteristics,  as  "  a 
prophecy  of  the  woman  of  the  future,"  are  illustrated  by  copious 
extracts  from  her  correspondence. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


Ellen  Key 

Her  Life  and  Her  Work 

A  Critical  Study 
By  Louise  Nystrom  Hamilton 

Translated  by  Anna  E.  B.  Fries 
12°.     With  Portrait       $1.25  net. 

The  name  of  Ellen  Key  has  for  years  been 
a  target  for  attacks  of  various  kinds.  Friends 
have  in  connection  with  the  issues  that  have 
arisen  in  regard  to  the  influence  of  her  work 
become  enemies  and  friction  has  been  caused 
in  many  homes.  Her  ideals  and  her  purposes 
have  been  misquoted  and  misinterpreted  until 
the  very  convictions  for  which  she  stood  have 
been  twisted  so  as  to  appear  to  be  the  evils  that 
she  was  attempting  to  combat.  Her  critics, not 
content  with  decrying  and  distorting  the  mes- 
sage that  she  had  to  give  to  the  world,  have 
even  attacked  her  personal  character;  and  as 
the  majority  of  these  had  no  direct  knowledge 
in  the  matter,  strange  rumors  and  fancies  have 
been  spread  abroad  about  her  life.  The 
readers  of  her  books,  who  are  now  to  be 
counted  throughout  the  world  by  the  hundreds 
of  thousands,  who  desire  to  know  the  truth 
about  this  much  discussed  Swedish  author, 
will  be  interested  in  this  critical  study  by 
Louise  Hamilton.  The  author  is  one  who  has 
been  intimate  with  Ellen  Key  since  her  youth. 
She  is  herself  the  wife  of  the  founder  of  the 
People's  Hospital  in  Stockholm, where  for  over 
twenty  years  Ellen  Key  taught  and  lectured. 

The  volume  gives  an  admirable  survey  of 
the  purpose  and  character  of  Ellen  Key's 
teachings  and  of  her  books. 

New  York         6.  P.  Putnam's  Sons          London 


Problems  of  the  Sexes 

SEp- Jean  Finot 

Author  of  "  The  Science  of  Happiness,"  etc. 

Translated  under  authority  of  the  author 
by  Mary  J.Sal  lord 

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A  masterly  presentation  of  the  attitude  of 
the  ages  toward  woman  and  an  eloquent  plea 
for  her  further  enfranchisement  from  imposed 
and  unnatural  limitations.  The  range  of 
scholarship  that  has  been  enlisted  in  the  writ- 
ing may  well  excite  one's  wonder,  but  the  tone 
of  the  book  is  popular  and  its  appeal  is  not  to 
any  small  section  of  the  reading  public  but  to 
all  the  classes  and  degrees  of  an  age  that,  from 
present  indications,  will  go  down  in  history 
as  the  Century  of  Woman.  The  plea  which 
the  author  makes  for  a  deeper  participation  in 
life  of  a  sex  that  has  too  long  been  regarded 
as  predestined  to  domesticity,  is  made  as  much 
in  the  interest  of  the  race  as  in  that  of  woman 
herself.  The  book,  unassailably  sound  in  its 
conclusions,  merits  the  closest  attention. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


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